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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



ON THE STORIED OHIO 



PITTSBURG harbor, showing the union of the Monon- 
•*- gahela and Alleghany rivers in background, with suspen- 
sion bridge. To the left, steamers towing coal barges. 



On the Storied Ohio 

An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand 
Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo 

BY 

REUBEN GOLD THWAITES 

Author of "Down Historic Waterways,'" "Daniel 

Boone," etc. $ editor of " The Jesuit 

Relations," etc. 



Being a new and revised edition of ' < Afloat on 

the Ohio" with new Preface y and full-page 

illustrations from photographs 




Chicago 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1903 



¥ HFMrAUY Ofi 
CONGRESS, 

T*0 COfHsB Red&ved 

OCT T9 1909 



CLASS O. XXa Wa 



Copyright 
By Reuben Gold Thwaites 

" Afloat on the Ohio," 1897 
" On the Storied Ohio," 1903 



Published October 



: 9°3 



\°i 



V 






o 






To 

FREDERICK JACKSON TURNER, Ph. Z>., 

Professor of American History in the University of 

Wisco?isin, zvho loves his native West 

and -with rare insight and gift of phrase 

interprets her story, 

this Log of the "Pilgrim''' is cordially inscribed. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Preface to New Edition --»--- xiii 
Chapter I. 

On the Monongahela — The over-mountain path — Red- 
stone Old Fort — The Youghiogheny — Braddock's 
defeat. --------- j 

Chapter II. 
First day on the Ohio — At Logstown. - - - -22 

Chapter III. 
Shingis Old Town — The dynamiter — Yellow Creek. - 29 

Chapter IV. 
An industrial region — Steubenville — Mingo Bottom — In 
a steel mill — Indian character. - - - - 39 

Chapter V. 
House-boat life — Decadence of steamboat traffic — 
Wheeling, and Wheeling Creek. - - - - 50 

Chapter VI. 
The Big Grave — Washington and Round Bottom — A 
lazy man's paradise — Captina Creek — George Rogers 
Clark at Fish Creek — Southern types. - - - 64 

Chapter VII. 

In Dixie — Oil and natural gas, at Witten's Bottom — 
The Long Reach— Photographing crackers — Visitors 

in camp. - 77 

vii 



viii Contents 

Chapter VIII. page 

Life ashore and afloat — Marietta, " the Plymouth Rock 
of the West" — The Little Kanawha — The story of 
Blennerhassett's Island. ------ 87 

Chapter IX. 

Poor whites — First library in the West — An hour at 
Hockingport — A hermit fisher. - - - - 99 

Chapter X. 

Cliff-dwellers, on Long Bottom — Pomeroy Bend — Le- 
tart's Island, and Rapids — Game, in the early day — 
Rainy weather — In a " cracker " home. - 109 

Chapter XI. 
Battle of Point Pleasant — The story of Gallipolis — 
Rosebud — Huntington — The genesis of a house- 
boater. 125 

Chapter XII. 
In a fog — The Big Sandy — Rainy weather — Operatic 
gypsies — An ancient tavern. - - - - - 139 

Chapter XIII. 
The Scioto, and the Shawanese — A night at Rome — 
Limestone — Keels, flats, and boatmen of the olden 
time. --------- jijq 

Chapter XIV. 

Produce-boats — A dead town — On the Great Bend — 
Grant's birthplace — The Little Miami — The genesis 
of Cincinnati. - 168 

Chapter XV. 
The story of North Bend— The ' ' shakes "—Driftwood- 
Rabbit hash— A side-trip to Big Bone Lick. - - 182 



Contents ix 

Chapter XVI. PAGE 

New Switzerland — An old-time river pilot — House- 
boat life on the lower reaches — A philosopher in 
rags — Wooded solitudes — Arrival at Louisville. - 202 

Chapter XVII. 
Storied Louisville — Red Indians and white — A night on 
Sand Island — New Albany — Riverside hermits — The 
river falling — A deserted village — An ideal camp. - 218 

Chapter XVIII. 
Village life — A traveling photographer — On a country 
road — Studies in color — Again among colliers — In 
sweet content — A ferry romance. - - - - 233 

Chapter XIX. 
Fishermen's tales — Skiff nomenclature — Green River — 
Evansville — Henderson — Audubon and Rafinesque — 
Floating shops — The Wabash. - - - - 251 

Chapter XX. 
Shawneetown — Farm-houses on stilts — Cave-in-Rock — 

Island nights. 267 

Chapter XXI. 
The Cumberland and the Tennessee — Stately soli- 
tudes — Old Fort Massac — Dead towns in Egypt — 
The last camp — Cairo. 280 

Affendix A. — Historical outline of Ohio Valley settle- 
ment. -- 296 

Affiendix i?.— Selected list of Journals of previous trav- 
elers down the Ohio. - 320 

Index. ---- 329 



Illustrations 

Page 
The Forks of the Ohio Frontispiece 

The Monongahela at Braddock 16 v 

u The Contour of the Rugged Hills "... 34 

A Floating Sawmill 56 

The River Trough S6 

Marketing Railway Ties 234 ~ 

Stately Solitudes 282 y 



PREFACE 

The historical pilgrimage herein recorded 
was made in 1894, although the volume itself 
was not published until three years afterward. 
The original title was " Afloat on the Ohio ; " 
but the present publishers, in arranging for 
this revised and illustrated edition, have pre- 
vailed upon the Author to change the name 
to " On the Storied Ohio," believing this latter 
to be more truly descriptive of the character 
of the book. No doubt this is true, although 
one naturally hesitates at such a step from 
fear that some person may thereby be led 
into thinking this a new work, and thus possi- 
bly purchasing a duplicate. It is hoped, how- 
ever, that the similarity of the two titles may 
prevent such confusion. Here and there ver- 
bal changes have been made, but it has not 
been found necessary to enter upon more seri- 
ous revision; for, while the past nine fruitful 
years have witnessed great development in the 
industries of the region, and surprising growth 
xiii 



xiv Prefa 



ce 



in many of the towns, natural conditions along 
the great river remain for the most part un- 
changed from the time when this pilgrimage 
was undertaken. 

There were in the little ship's company four 
pilgrims — the Author, his Wife (" W — " of 
the narrative), their Boy of ten and a half years, 
and the Doctor (he of " Down Historic Water- 
ways "). The others were bent solely on the 
outing; but the first-named was, to be frank, 
quite as much interested in gathering " local 
color" for his studies of Western history as 
he was in cultivating a holiday tan. The Ohio 
River was an important factor in the develop- 
ment of the West. He therefore wished inti- 
mately to know the great waterway in its 
various phases — to see with his own eyes what 
the borderers saw; in imagination, to redress 
the pioneer stage and repeople it. 

It was a long journey for a mere skiff, those 
eleven hundred miles from Brownsville, on the 
Monongahela, down to the Father of Waters. 
The pilgrims might with much saving of time, 
energy, and patience have made the journey 
upon one of the numerous steamers which 
churn the muddy stream. But, from a steamer's 
deck, scenes take on a far different aspect than 



Prefaa 



xv 



when viewed from near the level of the flood. 
The manner of a pilgrimage upon our historic 
waterways should be as nearly as possible that 
of the pioneer canoeist or flatboatman himself 
— hence " Pilgrim," and the nightly camp in 
primitive fashion. 

A richly-varied panorama passes in imagina- 
tion before us as we contemplate the glowing 
story of the Ohio. A motley company have 
here performed their parts: Savages of the 
mound-building age, rearing upon these banks 
curious earth-works for archaeologists of the 
twentieth century to puzzle over ; Iroquois war- 
parties, silently swooping upon sleeping vil- 
lages of the Shawanese, and returning in noisy 
glee to the New York lakes, laden with spoils 
and captives; La Salle, prince of French ex- 
plorers and fur-traders, standing at the Falls of 
the Ohio, and seeking to fathom the geograph- 
ical mysteries of the continent; French and 
English fur-traders, in bitter contention for the 
patronage of the red man; borderers of the 
rival nations, shedding each other's blood in 
protracted partisan wars ; surveyors like Wash- 
ington and Boone and the McAfees, clad in 
leather hunting-shirts and fringed leggings, 
mapping out future states ; hardy frontiers- 



xvi Preface 

men, fighting, hunting, or farming, as occasion 
demanded; George Rogers Clark, descending 
the river with his handful of heroic Virginians 
to win for the United States the great North- 
west, and for himself the laurels of fame; the 
Marietta pilgrims, beating Revolutionary swords 
into Ohio plowshares; and all that succeeding 
tide of immigrants from our own Atlantic coast 
and every corner of Europe, pouring down the 
great valley to plant powerful commonwealths 
beyond the mountains. 

The trip was successful, whatever the point 
of view. Physically, those six weeks " On the 
Storied Ohio " were an ideal outing — at times 
rough, to be sure, but exhilarating, health- 
giving, brain-inspiring. The Log of the " Pil- 
grim " seeks faintly to outline the experiences 
of her crew, but no words can adequately 
describe the wooded hill-slopes which day by 
day girt them in; the romantic ravines which 
corrugate the rim of the Ohio's basin; the 
beautiful islands which stud the glistening tide ; 
the great affluents which, winding down for 
a thousand miles from the Blue Ridge, the 
Cumberland, and the Great Smoky, pour their 
floods into the central stream ; the giant trees 
— sycamores, pawpaws, cork elms, catalpas, 



Preface xvii 

walnuts, and what not — which everywhere are 
in view in this woodland world ; the strange 
and lovely flowers they saw; the curious 
people they met, black and white, and the 
varieties of dialect that caught their ears ; the 
details of their charming gypsy life, ashore 
and afloat, during which they were conscious 
of red blood tingling through their veins, and, 
children of Nature, were careless of the work- 
aday world so far away — simply glad to be 
alive. 

For the better understanding of numerous 
historical references in the Log, the Author 
has thought it well to present in the Appendix 
a brief sketch of the settlement of the Ohio 
Valley. 

A selected list of journals of previous travel- 
ers down the Ohio has also been added, for 
the benefit of students of the social and eco- 
nomic history of this important gateway to the 
continental interior. 

R. G. T. 

Madison, Wis., August, 1903. 



ON THE STORIED OHIO 



CHAPTER- I. 

On the Monongahela — The over-mountain 
path — Redstone Old Fort — The Yough- 
iogheny — braddock's defeat. 

In camp near Charleroi, Pa., Friday, 
May 4. — Pilgrim, built for the glassy lakes 
and smooth-flowing rivers of Wisconsin, had 
suffered unwonted indignities in her rough 
journey of a thousand miles in a box-car. But 
beyond a leaky seam or two, which the Doc- 
tor had righted with clouts and putty, and 
some ugly scratches which were only paint- 
deep, she was in fair trim as she gracefully lay 
at the foot of the Brownsville shipyard this 
morning and received her lading. 

There were spectators in abundance. 
Brownsville, in the olden day, had seen many 
an expedition set out from this spot for the 
1 



2 On the Storied Ohio 

grand tour of the Ohio, but not in the per- 
sonal recollection of any in this throng of 
idlers, for the era of the flatboat and pirogue 
now belongs to history. Our expedition is a 
revival, and therein lies novelty. However, 
the historic spirit was not evident among our 
visitors — railway men, coal miners loafing 
out the duration of a strike, shipyard hands 
lying in wait for busier times, small boys 
blessed with as much leisure as curiosity, and 
that wonder of wonders, a diffident newspaper 
reporter. Their chief concern centered in the 
query, how Pilgrim could hold that goodly 
heap of luggage and still have room to spare 
for four passengers? It became evident that 
her capacity is akin to that of the magician's 
bag. 

"A dandy skiff, gents!" said the foreman 
of the shipyard, as we settled into our seats — 
the Doctor bow, I stroke, with W — and the 
Boy in the stern sheets. Having in silence 
critically watched us for a half hour, seated on 
a capstan, his red flannel shirt rolled up to his 
elbows, and well-corded chest and throat bared 
to wind and weather, this remark of the fore- 
man was evidently the studied judgment of an 
expert. It was taken as such by the good- 



Redstone Creek 3 

natured crowd, which, as we pushed off into 
the stream, lustily joined in a chorus of ' 'Good- 
bye !" and "Good luck to yees, an' ye don't 
git th' missus drowndid 'fore ye git to Cairo!" 

The current is slight on these lower reaches 
of the Monongahela. It comes down gayly 
enough from the West Virginia hills, over 
many a rapid, and through swirls and eddies 
in plenty, until Morgantown is reached; and 
then, settling into a more sedate course, is at 
Brownsville finally converted into a mere mill- 
pond, by the back-set of the four slack-water 
dams between there and Pittsburg. This 
means solid rowing for the first sixty miles of 
our journey, with a current scarcely percep- 
tible. 

The thought of it suggests lunch. At the 
mouth of Redstone Creek, a mile below Dun- 
lap Creek, our port of departure, we turn in to 
a shaly beach at the foot of a wooded slope, 
in semi-rusticity, and fortify the inner man. 

A famous spot, this Redstone Creek. Be- 
tween its mouth and that of Dunlap's was 
made, upon the site of extensive Indian forti- 
fication mounds, the first English agricultural 
settlement west of the Alleghanies. It is un- 
safe to establish dates for first discoveries, or 



4 On the Storied Ohio 

for first settlements. The wanderers who, 
first of all white men, penetrated the fast- 
nesses of the wilderness were mostly of the 
sort who left no documentary traces behind 
them. It is probable, however, that the first 
Redstone settlement was made as early as 
1750, the year following- the establishment of 
the Ohio Company, which had been chartered 
by the English crown and given a half-million 
acres of land west of the mountains and south 
of the Ohio River, provided it established 
thereon a hundred families within seven years. 
"Redstone Old Fort" — the name had ref- 
erence to the aboriginal earthworks — played 
a part in the Fort Necessity and Braddock 
campaigns and in later frontier wars; and, 
being the western terminus of the over-moun- 
tain road known at various historic periods as 
Nemacolin's Path, Braddock's Road, and 
Cumberland Pike, was for many years the 
chief point of departure for Virginia expedi- 
tions down the Ohio River. Washington, who 
had large landed interests on the Ohio, knew 
Redstone well; and here George Rogers Clark 
set out (1778) upon flatboats, with his rough- 
and-ready Virginia volunteers, to capture the 
country north of the Ohio for the American 



Brownsville 5 

arms — one of the least known, but most mo- 
mentous conquests in history. 

Early in the nineteenth century, Redstone 
became Brownsville. But, whether as Red- 
stone or Brownsville, it was, in its day, like 
most " jumping off" places on the edge of 
civilization, a veritable Sodom. Wrote good 
old John Pope, in his Journal of 1790, and in 
the same strain scores of other veracious chron- 
iclers: ' l At this Place we were detained about 
a Week, experiencing every Disgust which 
Rooks and Harpies could excite. " Here thrived 
extensive yards in which were built flatboats, 
arks, keel boats, and all that miscellaneous 
collection of water craft which, with their 
roisterly crews, were the life of the Ohio before 
the introduction of steam rendered vessels of 
deeper draught essential; whereupon much of 
the shipping business went down the river to 
better stages of water, first to Pittsburg, thence 
to Wheeling, and to Steubenville. 

All that is of the past. Brownsville is still 
a busy corner of the world, though of a differ- 
ent sort, with all its romance gone. To the 
student of Western history, Brownsville will 
always be a shrine — albeit a smoky, dusty 
shrine, with the smell of lubricators and the 



6 On the Storied Ohio 

clang of hammers, and much talk thereabout 
of the glories of Mammon. 

The Monongahela is a characteristic moun- 
tain trough. From an altitude of four or five 
hundred feet, the country falls in steep slopes 
to a narrow alluvial bench, and then a broad 
beach of shale and pebble ; the slopes are 
broken, here and there, where deep, shadowy 
ravines come winding down, bearing muddy 
contributions to the greater flood. The higher 
hills are crowned with forest trees, the lower 
ofttimes checkered by brown fields, recently 
planted, and rows of vines trimmed low to 
stakes, as in the fashion of the Rhine. The 
stream, though still majestic in its sweep, is 
henceforth a commercial slack-water, lined 
with noisy, grimy, matter-of-fact manufactur- 
ing towns, for the most part literally abutting 
one upon the other all of the way down to 
Pittsburg, and fast defiling the once picturesque 
banks with the gruesome offal of coal mines 
and iron plants. Surprising is the density of 
settlement along the river. Often, four or five 
full-fledged cities are at once in view from our 
boat, the air is thick with sooty smoke belched 
from hundreds of stacks, the ear is almost 



A Deserted Hamlet 7 

deafened with the whirr and roar and bang of 
milling industries. 

Tipples of bituminous coal-shafts are ever 
in sight — begrimed scaffolds of wood and iron, 
arranged for dumping the product of the mines 
into both barges and railway cars. Either 
bank is lined with railways, in sight of which 
we shall almost continuously float, all the way 
down to Cairo, nearly eleven hundred miles 
away. At each tipple is a miners' hamlet; a 
row of cottages or huts, cast in a common 
mold, either unpainted, or bedaubed with that 
cheap, ugly red with which one is familiar in 
railway bridges and rural barns. Sometimes 
these huts, though in the mass dreary enough, 
are kept in neat repair; but often are they 
sadly out of elbows — pigs and children pro- 
miscuously at their doors, paneless sash stuffed 
with rags, unsightly litter strewn around, 
misery stamped on every feature of the home- 
less tenements. Dreariest of all is a deserted 
mining village, and there are many such — the 
shaft having been worked out, or an unquench- 
able subterranean fire left to smolder in neg- 
lect. Here the tipple has fallen into creaking 
decrepitude; the cabins are without windows 
or doors — these having been taken to some 



8 On the Storied Ohio 

newer hamlet; ridge-poles are sunken, chim- 
neys tottering; soot covers the gaunt bones, 
which for all the world are like a row of skel- 
etons, perched high, and grinning down at you 
in their misery; while the black offal of the 
pit, covering deep the original beauty of the 
once green slope, is in its turn being veiled 
with climbing weeds — such is Nature's haste, 
when untrammeled, to heal the scars wrought 
by man. 

A mile or two below Charleroi is Lock No. 
4, the first of the quartet of obstructions be- 
tween Brownsville and Pittsburg. We are 
encamped a mile below the dam, in a cozy 
little willowed nook; a rod behind our ample 
tent rises the face of an alluvial terrace, occu- 
pied by a grain-field running back for an hun- 
dred yards to the hills, at the base of which is 
a railway track. Across the river, here some 
two hundred and fifty yards wide, the dark, 
rocky bluffs, slashed with numerous ravines, 
ascend sharply from the flood; at the quarried 
base, a wagon road and the customary railway; 
and upon the stony beach, two or three rough 
shelter-tents, housing the Black Diamond 
Brass Band, of Monongahela City, out on a 



McKeesport 9 

week's picnic to while away the period of the 
strike. 

It was seven o'clock when we struck camp, 
and our frugal repast was finished by lantern- 
light. The sun sets early in this narrow trough 
through the foothills of the Laurel range. 

McKeesport, Pa., Saturday, May 5th. — 
Out there on the beach, near Charleroi, with 
the sail for an awning, Pilgrim had been con- 
verted into a boudoir for the Doctor, who, 
snuggled in his sleeping-bag, emitted an occa- 
sional snore — echoes from the Land of Nod. 
W — and our Boy of ten summers, on their 
canvas folding-cots, were peacefully oblivious 
of the noises of the night, and needed the kiss 
of dawn to rouse them. But for me, always 
a light sleeper, and as yet unused to our airy 
bedroom, the crickets chirruped through the 
long watches. 

Two or three freighters passed in the night, 
with monotonous swish-swish and swelling 
wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this 
passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, 
a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. 
First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a 
moment a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen 



io On the Storied Ohio 

feet in width; in quick succession come heavy, 
booming waves, running at an acute angle with 
the shore, breaking at once into angry foam, 
and wasting themselves far up on the strand, 
for a few moments making bedlam with any 
driftwood which chances to have made lodg- 
ment there. When suddenly awakened by 
this boisterous turmoil, the first thought is 
that a dam has broken and a flood is at hand; 
but, by the time you rise upon your elbow, the 
scurrying uproar lessens, and gradually dies 
away as it rolls along a more distant shore. 

We were slow in getting off this morning. 
But the dense fog had been loath to lift; and 
at first the stove smoked badly, until we dis- 
covered and removed the source of trouble. 
This stove is an ingenious contrivance of the 
Doctor's — a box of sheet-iron, of slight weight, 
so arranged as to be folded into an incredibly 
small space: a vast improvement for cooking 
purposes over an open camp-fire, which Pil- 
grim's crew know, from long experience in far 
distant fields, to be a vexation to eyes and soul. 

Coaling hamlets more or less deserted were 
frequent this morning — unpainted, window- 
less, ragged wrecks. At the inhabited mining 
villages, either close to the strand or well up 



Among the Miners 1 1 

on hillside ledges, idle men were everywhere 
about. Women and boys and girls were stock- 
ingless and shoeless, and often dirty to a de- 
gree. But, when conversed with, we found 
them independent, respectful, and self-respect- 
ing folk. Occasionally, for the mere sake of 
meeting these workaday brothers of ours, I 
would, with canteen slung on shoulder, climb 
the steep flight of stairs cut in the clay bank, 
and on reaching the terrace inquire for drink- 
ing water, talking familiarly with the folk who 
came to meet me at the well-curb. 

There are old-fashioned Dutch ovens in 
nearly every yard, a few chickens, and often 
a shed for the cow, that is off on her daily 
climb over the neighboring hills. Through 
the black pall of shale, a few vegetables strug- 
gle feebly to the light; in the corners of the 
palings, are hollyhocks and four-o'clocks; and, 
on window-sills, rows of battered tin cans, 
resplendent in blue and yellow labels, are the 
homes of verbenas and geraniums, in sickly 
bloom. Now and then, a back door in the 
dreary block is distinguished by an arbored 
trellis bearing a grape-vine, and furnishing for 
the weary housewife a shady kitchen, al fresco. 
As a rule, however, there is little attempt to 



12 On the Storied Ohio 

better the homeless shelter furnished by the 
corporation. 

We restocked with provisions at Mononga- 
hela City, a smart, newish town, and at Eliz- 
abeth, old and dingy. It was at Elizabeth, 
then Elizabethtown, that travelers from the 
Eastern States, over the old Philadelphia Road, 
chiefly took boat for the Ohio — the Virginians 
still clinging to Redstone, as the terminus of 
the Braddock Road. Elizabethtown, in flat- 
boat days, was the seat of a considerable boat- 
building industry, its yards in time turning out 
steamboats for the New Orleans trade, and 
even sea-going sailing craft; but, to-day, coal 
barges are the principal output of her decaying 
shipyards. 

By this time, the duties of our little ship's 
company are well defined. W — supervises 
the cuisine, most important of all offices; the 
Doctor is chief navigator, assistant cook, and 
hewer of wood; it falls to my lot to purchase 
supplies, to be carrier of water, to pitch tent 
and make beds, and, while breakfast is being 
cooked, to dismantle the camp and, so far as 
may be, to repack Pilgrim; the Boy collects 
driftwood, wipes dishes, and helps at what he 



The Youghiogheny 13 

can — while all hands row or paddle through the 
livelong day, as whim or need dictates. 

Lock No. 3, at Walton, necessitated a por- 
tage of the load, over the left bank. It is a 
steep, rocky climb, and the descent on the 
lower side, strewn with stone chips, destructive 
to shoe-leather. The Doctor and I let Pilgrim 
herself down with a long rope, over a shallow 
spot in the apron of the dam. 

At six o'clock a camping-ground for the night 
became desirable. We were fortunate, last 
evening, to find a bit of rustic country in which 
to pitch our tent; but all through this after- 
noon both banks of the river were lined with 
village after village, city after city, scarcely a 
garden patch between them — Wilson, Coal 
Valley, Lostock, Glassport, Dravosburg, and 
a dozen others not recorded on our map, which 
bears date of 1882. The su,n was setting be- 
hind the rim of the river basin, when we 
reached the broad mouth of the Youghiogheny 
(pr. Yock-i-o-gai'-ny), which is implanted 
with a cluster of iron-mill towns, of which 
McKeesport is the center. So far as we could 
see down the Monongahela, the air was thick 
with the smoke of glowing chimneys, and the 
pulsating whang of steel-making plants and 



14 On the Storied Ohio 

rolling-mills made the air tremble. The view 
up the "Yough" was more inviting; so, with 
oars and paddle firmly set, we turned off our 
course and lustily pulled against the strong 
current of the tributary. A score or two of 
house-boats lay tied to the McKeesport shore or 
were bolstered high upon the beach; a fleet of 
Yough steamers had their noses to the wharf; 
a half-dozen fishermen were setting nets; and, 
high over all, with lofty spans of iron cobweb, 
several railway and wagon bridges spanned 
the gliding stream. 

It was a mile and a half up the Yough before 
we reached the open country; and then only 
the rapidly-gathering dusk drove us ashore, 
for on near approach the prospect was not 
pleasing. Finally settling into this damp, 
shallow pocket in the shelving bank, we find 
broad-girthed elms and maples screening us 
from all save the river front, the high bank in 
the rear fringed with blue violets which emit 
a delicious odor, backed by a field of waving 
corn stretching off toward heavily-wooded 
hills. Our supper cooked and eaten by lan- 
tern-light, we vote ourselves as, after all, 
serenely content out here in the starlight — at 



Major Washington 15 

peace with the world, and very close to Na- 
ture's heart. 

There come to us, on the cool evening 
breeze, faint echoes of the never-ceasing clang 
of McKeesport iron mills, down on the Mo- 
nongahela shore. But it is not of these we 
talk, lounging in the welcome warmth of the 
camp-fire; it is of the 'age of romance, a hun- 
dred and forty odd years ago, when Major 
Washington and Christopher Gist, with fam- 
ished horses, floundered in the ice hereabout, 
upon their famous midwinter trip to Fort Le 
Bceuf; when the " Forks of the Yough" be- 
came the extreme outpost of Western advance, 
with all the accompanying horrors of frontier 
war; and later, when McKeesport for a time 
rivaled Redstone and Elizabethtown as a cen- 
ter for boat-building and a point of departure 
for the Ohio. 

Pittsburg, Sunday, May 6th. — Many of 
the trees are already in full leaf. The tril- 
lium is fading. We are in the full tide of 
early summer, up here in the mountains, and 
our long journey of six weeks is southward and 
toward the plain. The lower Ohio may soon 
be a bake-oven, and the middle of June will 
be upon us before far-away Cairo is reached. 



1 6 On the Storied Ohio 

It behooves us to be up and doing. The river, 
flowing by our door, is an ever-pressing invi- 
tation to be onward; it stops not for Sunday, 
nor ever stops — and why should we, mere 
drift upon the passing tide? 

There was a smart thunder-shower during 
breakfast, followed by a cool, cloudy morning. 
At eleven o'clock Pilgrim was laden. A south- 
eastern breeze ruffled the waters of the Yough, 
and for the first time the Doctor ordered up 
the sail, with W — at the sheet. It was not 
long before Pilgrim had the water ' ' singing at 
her prow." With a rush, we flew past the 
factories, the house-boats, and the shabby 
street-ends of McKeesport, out into the Mo- 
nongahela, where, luckily, the wind still held. 

At McKeesport, the hills on the right are of 
a relatively low altitude, smooth and well 
rounded. It was here that Braddock, in his 
slow progress toward Fort Duquesne, first 
crossed the Monongahela, to the wide, level 
bottom on the left bank. He had found the 
inner country to the right of the river and 
below the Yough too rough and hilly for his 
march, hence had turned back toward the 
Monongahela, fording the river to take ad- 
vantage of the less difficult bottom. Some 



TT requires a liberal exercise of the historical imagination 
-*• to convert this "noisy iron-manufacturing town" into 
the scene of Braddock's Defeat ; but although the fateful 
ravine has been well built over, its outlines can still easily 
be traced by local antiquarians. 



Braddock's Defeat \j 

four miles below this first crossing, hills reap- 
proach the left bank, till the bottom ceases; 
the right thenceforth becomes the more favor- 
able side for marching. With great pomp, he 
recrossed the Monongahela just below the 
point where Turtle Creek enters from the east. 
Within a forested ravine, but a hundred yards 
inland, the brilliant column was surrounded by 
a well-sheltered band of Indians and French 
half-breeds, and suffered that heart-sickening 
defeat which will live as one of the most tragic 
events in American history. 

The noisy iron-manufacturing town of Brad- 
dock now occupies the site of Braddock's de- 
feat. Not far from the old ford stretches the 
great dam of Lock No. 2, which we portaged, 
with the usual difficulties of steep, stony banks. 
Braddock is but eight miles across country 
from Pittsburg, although twelve by river. We 
have, all the way down, an almost constant 
succession of iron and steel-making towns, 
chief among them Homestead, on the left 
bank, seven miles above Pittsburg. The great 
strike of July, 1892, with its attendant horrors, 
is a lurid chapter in the story of American in- 
dustry. With shuddering interest, we view the 
famous great bank of ugly slag at the base of 



1 8 On the Storied Ohio 

the steel 'mills, where the barges housing the 
Pinkerton guards were burned by the mob. 

To-day, the Homesteaders are enjoying 
their Sunday afternoon outing along the town 
shore — nurses pushing baby carriages, self- 
absorbed lovers holding hands upon riverside 
benches, merry-makers rowing in skiffs or 
crossing the river in crowded ferries; the elec- 
tric cars, following either side of the stream 
as far down as Pittsburg, crowded to suffoca- 
tion with gayly-attired folk. They look little 
like rioters; yet it seems but the other day 
when Homestead men and women and children 
were hysterically reveling in atrocities akin to 
those of the Paris commune. 

Approaching Pittsburg, the high steeps are 
everywhere crowded with houses — great masses 
of smoke-color, dotted all over with white 
shades and sparkling windows, which seem, in 
the gray afternoon, to be ten thousand eyes 
coldly staring down at Pilgrim and her crew 
from all over the flanking hillsides. 

Lock No. i, the last barrier between us and 
the Ohio, is a mile or two up the Mononga- 
hela, with warehouses and manufacturing 
plants closely hemming it in on either side. 
A portage, unaided, appears to be impossible 



Making a Lock. a 9 

here, and we resolve to lock through. But it 
is Sunday, and the lock is closed.' -Above, a 
dozen down-going steamboats are moored to 
the shore, waiting for midnight and the re- 
sumption of business; while below, a similar 
line of ascending boats is awaiting the close 
of the day of rest. Pilgrim, however, cannot 
hang up at the levee with any comfort to her 
crew; it is desirable, with evening at hand, 
and a thunder-storm angrily rising over the 
Pittsburg hills, to escape from this grimy pool, 
flanked about with iron and coal yarjds,: chimney 
stacks, and a forest of shipping, and quickly 
to seek the open country lower down on the 
Ohio. The lock-keepers appreciated our sit- 
uation. Two or three sturdy, courteous men 
helped us carry our cargo, by an intricate 
official route, over coils of rope and chains, 
over lines of shafting, and along dizzy walks 
overhanging the yawning basin; while the 
Doctor, directed to a certain chute in mid- 
stream, took unladen Pilgrim over the great 
dam, with a wild swoop which made our eyes 
swim to witness from the lock. 

We had laboriously been rowing on slack- 
water, all the way from Brownsville,; with the 
help of an hour's sail this morning; whereas, 



20 On the Storied Ohio 

now that we were in the strong current below 
the dam, we had but to gently paddle to glide 
swiftly on our way. A hundred steamers, 
more or less, lay closely packed with their 
bows upon the right, or principal city wharf. 
It was raining at last, and we donned our 
storm wraps. No doubt yellow Pilgrim, — 
thought hereabout to be a frail craft for these 
waters, — her crew all poncho-clad, slipping 
silently through the dark water swishing at their 
sterns, was a novelty to the steamboat men, for 
they leaned lazily over their railings, the officers 
on the upper deck, engineers and roustabouts 
on the lower, and watched us curiously. 

Our period of elation was brief. Black 
storm-clouds, jagged and portentous, were 
scurrying across the sky; and by the time we 
had reached the forks, where the Mononga- 
hela, in the heart of the city, joins forces with 
the Alleghany, Pilgrim was being buffeted 
about on a chop sea produced by cross currents 
and a northwest gale. She can weather an 
ordinary storm, but for this experience is un- 
fitted. When a passing steamer threw out long 
lines of frothy waves to add to the disturbance, 
they broke over our gunwales ; and W — with 
the coffee pot and the Boy with a tin basin 



Tempest-Tossed 2 1 

were hard pushed to keep the water below 
the thwarts. 

Seeking the friendly shelter of a house-boat, 
of which there were scores tied to the left 
bank, we trusted our drenched luggage to the 
care of its proprietor, placed Pilgrim in a snug 
harbor hard by, and, hurrying up a steep flight 
of steps leading from the levee to the terrace 
above, found a suburban hotel just as its office 
clock struck eight. 

Across the Ohio, through the blinding storm, 
the dark outlines of Pittsburg and Allegheny 
City are spangled with electric lamps which 
throw toward us long, shimmering lances of 
light, in which the mighty stream, gray, mys- 
terious, tempest-tossed, is seen to be surging 
onward with majestic sweep. Upon its bosom 
we are to be borne for a thousand miles. Our 
introduction has been unpropitious; it is to be 
hoped that on further acquaintance we may 
be better pleased with La Belle Riviere. 



CHAPTER II. 
First day on the Ohio — At Logstown. 

Beaver River,' Monday, May 7th. — We 
have to-day rowed and paddled under a cloud- 
less sky, but in the teeth of frequent squalls, 
with heavy waves freely dashing their spray 
upon us. At ,sueh times a goodly. current, 
aided by numerous wing-dams, appears of 
little avail-; for, when we rested upon oun oars, 
Pilgrim would be unmercifully drwea up 
stream. Thus it has been an almost continual 
fight to make progress, and our five-and-twenty 
miles represent a hard day's work. : 

We were overloaded,- that was certain; so 
we stopped at Chartier, three miles* down the 
river from Pittsburg, and' sent oh xmr' portly 
bag of conventional traveling clothes by ex- 
press to Cincinnati, where we intend stopping 
for a day. This leaves us in our rough boat- 
ing costumes for all the smaller towns en route. 
What we may lose in possible social embarrass- 
ments, we gain in lightened cargo. 
22 



Washington's Lands 23 

Here at the mouth of Charter's Creek was 
" Chartier's Old Town "; of ;a century and a 
third ago ; a straggling, unkempt Indian village 
theny but ,at least the banks were lovely, and 
the rolling distances clothed with majestic 
trees/ To-day, these creek banks, connected 
by numerous iron bridges, are the dumping- 
ground for cinders, slag, rubbish of every de- 
gree of foulness; the bare hillsides are crowded 
with the ugly dwellings of iron-workers; the 
atmosphere is thick with smoke. 

Washington, one of the greatest land spec- 
ulators of his time, owned over 32,000 acres 
along the Ohio. He held a patent from Lord 
Dunmore, dated July 5, 1775, for nearly 3,000 
acres, lyjng about the mouth of this stream. 
Iri v accordance with the free-and-easy habit of 
tranS-Alleghany pioneers, ten men squatted on 
the tract, greatly to the indignation of the 
Father of his Country, who in 1784 brought 
against them a successful suit for ejectment. 
Twelve years later, more familiar with this 
than with most of his land grants, he sold it 
to a friend for $12,000. 

Just below Chartier are the picturesque 

McKee's Rocks, where is the first riffle in the 

iQhig. ; We < ' take " it with a swoop, the white- 



24 On the Storied Ohio 

capped waves dancing about us in a miniature 
rapid. Then we are in the open country, and 
for the first time find what the great river is 
like. The character of the banks, for some 
distance below Pittsburg, differs from that of 
the Monongahela. The hills are lower, less 
precipitous, more graceful. There is a de- 
lightful roundness of mass and shade. Beau- 
tiful villas occupy commanding situations on 
hillsides and hilltops; we catch glimpses of 
spires and cupolas, singly or in groups, peeping 
above the trees; and now and then a pretty 
suburban railway station. The railways upon 
either bank are built on neat terraces, and, far 
from marring the scene, agreeably give life to 
it; now and then, three such terraces are to 
be traced, one above the other, against the 
dark background of wood and field — the lower 
and upper devoted to rival railway lines, the 
central one to the common way. The mouths 
of the beautiful tributary ravines are crossed 
either by graceful iron spans, which frame 
charming undercut glimpses of sparkling water- 
falls and deep tangles of moss and fern, or by 
graceful stone arches draped with vines. There 
are terraced vineyards, after the fashion of the 
Rhineland, and the gentle arts of the florist 



Natural Gas 25 

and the truck-gardener are much in evidence. 
The winding river frequently sweeps at the 
base of rocky escarpments, but upon one side 
or the other there are now invariably bottom 
lands — narrow on these upper reaches, but we 
shall find them gradually widen and lengthen 
as we descend. The reaches are from four to 
seven miles in length, but these, too, are to 
lengthen in the middle waters. Islands are 
frequent, all day. The largest is Neville's, five 
miles long and thickly strewn with villas and 
market-gardens; still others are but long sand- 
bars grown to willows, and but temporarily in 
sight, for the stage of water is low just now, 
not over seven feet in the channel. 

Emerging from the immediate suburbs of 
Pittsburg, the fields broaden, farmsteads are 
occasionally to be seen nestled in the undula- 
tions of the hills, woodlands become more 
dense. There are, however, small rustic towns 
in plenty; we are seldom out of sight of these. 
Climbing a steep clay slope on the left bank, 
We visited one of them — Shousetown, fourteen 
miles below the city. A sad-eyed, shabby 
place, with the pipe line for natural gas sprawl- 
ing hither and yon upon the surface of the 
ground, except at the street crossings, where 



26 On the Storied Ohio 

a few inches of protecting ^arth Jiaye, been, laid 
upon it. The tariff levied by the gas company 
is ten cents per month for each light, and a 
dollar and a half for a cook-stove. 

We passed, this afternoon, one of the most 
interesting historic points upon the river — the 
picturesque site of ancient Logstown, upon 
the summit of a low, steep ridge on the right 
bank, just below Economy, and eighteen miles 
from Pittsburg. Logstown was a Shawanese 
village as early as 1727-30, and already a 
notable fur-trading post when Conrad Weiser 
visited it in 1748. Washington and Gist 
stopped at ' * Loggestown " for five days on 
their visit to the Ereneh at Fort Le Bqeuf, 
and several famous Indian treaties were signed 
there. . A short * distance l^elow, Anthony 
Wayne's Western army was encamped during 
the ; winter of 3 "7.92-93, .the place being then 
styled Legionville. . In 1824 George Rapp 
founded in the neighborhood, a German social- 
ist community* and this later settlement sur- 
vives to the present day in the thriving little 
rustic town of Economy. 

At four o'clock we struck camp on a heavily- 
willowed shore, at the apex of the great north- 



Beaver River 27 

ern bend of the Ohio (25 miles).* Across the 
river, on a broad level bottom, are the manu- 
facturing towns of Rochester and Beaver, 
divided by the Beaver River; in their rear, 
well-rounded hills rise gracefully, checkered 
by brown fields and woods in many shades 
of green, in the midst of which the flowering 
white dogwood rears its stately spray. Our 
sloping willowed sand-beach, of a hundred feet 
in width, is thick strewn with driftwood; back 
of this a clay bank, eight feet sheer, and a 
narrow bottom cut up into small fruit and 
vegetable patches; the gardeners' neat frame 
houses peeping from groves of apple, pear, and 
cherry, upon the flanking hillsides. A lofty 
oil-well derrick surmounts the edge of the ter- 
race a hundred yards below our camp. The 
bushes and the ground round about the well 
are black and slimy with crude petroleum, that 
has escaped during the boring process, and the 
air is heavy with its odor. We are upon the 
edge of the far-stretching oil and gas-well re- 

* Figures in parentheses, similarly placed throughout the 
volume, indicate the meandered river mileage from Pittsburg, 
according to the map of the Corps of Engineers, U. S. A., 
published in 1881. The actual mileage of the channel is a 
trifle greater. 



28 On the Storied Ohio 

gion, and shall soon become familiar enough 
with such sights and smells in the neighbor- 
hood of our nightly camps. 

No sooner had Pilgrim been turned up against 
a tree to dry, and a smooth sandy open chosen 
for the camp, than the proprietor of the soil 
appeared — a middling-sized, lanky man, with 
a red face and a sandy goatee surmounting a 
collarless white shirt all bestained with tobacco 
juice. He inquired rather sharply concerning 
us, but when informed of our innocent errand, 
and that we should stay with him but the 
night, he promptly softened, explaining that 
the presence of marauding fishermen and house- 
boat folk was incompatible with gardening 
for profit, and he would have none of them 
touch upon his shore. As to us, we were wel- 
come to stop throughout our pleasure, an in- 
vitation he reinforced by sitting upon a stump, 
whittling vigorously meanwhile, and glibly 
gossiping with the Doctor and me for a half- 
hour, on crop conditions and the state of the 
country — "bein' sociable like," he said, "an' 
hav'n' nuth'n 'gin you folks, as knows what's 
what, I kin see with half a eye!" 



CHAPTER III. 

Shingis Old Town — The dynamiter — Yel- 
low Creek. 

Kneistly's Cluster, W. Va., Tuesday, 
May 8th. — We were off at a quarter past seven, 
and among the earliest shoppers in Rochester, 
on the east bank of the Beaver, where supplies 
were laid in for the day. This busy, prosper- 
ous-looking place bears little resemblance to 
the squalid Indian village which Gist found 
here in November, 1750. It was then the 
seat of Barney Curran, an Indian trader — the 
same Curran whom Washington, three years 
later, employed in the mission to Venango. 
But the smaller sister town of Beaver, on the 
lower side of the mouth, — or rather the west- 
ern outskirts of Beaver a mile below the mouth, 
— has the most ancient history. On account 
of a ford across the Beaver, about where is 
now a slack-water dam, the neighborhood be- 
came of early importance to the French as a 
fur-trading center. With customary liberality 
29 



30 On the Storied Ohio 

toward the Indians, whom they assiduously 
cultivated, the French, in 1756, built for them, 
on this site, a substantial town, which the 
English indifferently called Sarikonk, Sohkon, 
King Beaver's Town, or Shingis Old Town. 
During the French and Indian War, the place 
was prominent as a rendezvous for the enemies 
of American borderers; numerous bloody forays 
were planned here, and hither were brought to 
be adopted into the tribes, or to be cruelly 
tortured, according to savage whim, many of 
the captives whose tales have made lurid the 
history of the Ohio Valley. 

Passing Beaver River, the Ohio enters upon 
its grand sweep to the southwest. The wide 
uplands at once become more rustic, especially 
those of the left bank, which no longer is 
threaded by a railway, as heretofore all the 
way from Brownsville. The two ranges of 
undulating hills, some three hundred and fifty 
feet high, forming the rim of the basin, are 
about a half mile apart; while the river itself 
is perhaps a third of a mile in width, leaving 
narrow bottoms on alternate sides, as the 
stream in gentle curves rebounds from the 
rocky base of one hill to that of another. 
When winding about such a base, there is at 



Side-tracked 3 1 

this stage of the water a sloping, stony beach, 
some ten to twenty yards in width, from which 
ascends the sharp steep, for the most part 
heavily tree-clad — maples, birches, elms, and 
oaks of goodly girth, the latter as yet in but 
half-leaf. On the "bottom side" of the river, 
the alluvial terrace presents a sheer wall of 
clay rising from eight to a dozen feet above the 
beach, which is often thick-grown with willows, 
whose roots hold the soil from becoming too 
easy a prey to the encroaching current. Syca- 
mores now begin to appear in the bottoms, 
although of less size than we shall meet below. 
Sometimes the little towns we see occupy a 
narrow and more or less rocky bench upon the 
hill side of the stream, but settlement is chiefly 
found upon the bottoms. 

Shippingsport (32 miles), on the left bank, 
where we stopped this noon for eggs, butter, 
and fresh water, is on a narrow hill bench — a 
dry, woe-begone hamlet, side-tracked from 
the path of the world's progress. While I was 
on shore, negotiating with the sleepy store- 
keeper, Pilgrim and her crew waited alongside 
the flatboat which serves as the town ferry. 
There they were visited by a breezy, red-faced 
young man, in a blue flannel shirt and a black 



32 On the Storied Ohio 

slouch hat, who was soon enough at his ease 
to lie flat upon the ferry gunwale, his cheeks 
supported by his hands, and talk to W — and 
the Doctor as if they were old friends. He 
was a dealer in nitroglycerin cartridges, he 
said, and pointed to a long, rakish-looking 
skiff hard by, which bore a red flag at its prow. 
"Ye see that? Thet there red flag? Well, 
thet's the law on us glyser^?;z fellers — over five 
hundred poun's, two flags; un'er five hundred, 
one flag. I've two hundred and fifty, I have. 
I tell yer th' steamboats steer clear o' me, an' 
don' yer fergit it, neither; they jist give me a 
wide berth, they do, yew bet! 'n' th' railroads, 
they don' carry no glyser^;z cartridge, they 
don't — all uv it by skiff, like yer see me goin'." 
These cartridges, he explained, are dropped 
into oil or gas wells whose owners are desirous 
of accelerating the flow. The cartridge, in 
exploding, enlarges the hole, and often the 
output of the well is at once increased by sev- 
eral hundred per cent. The young fellow had 
the air of a self-confident rustic, with little ex- 
perience in the world. Indeed, it seemed 
from his elated manner as if this might be his 
first trip from home, and the blowing of oil 
wells an incidental speculation. The Boy, 



The Dynamiter 33 

quick at inventive nomenclature, and fresh 
from a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson, 
called our visitor "the Dynamiter," and by 
that title I suppose we shall always remem- 
ber him. 

The Dynamiter confided to his listeners that 
he was going down the river for "a clean 
hundred miles, and that's right smart fur, ain't 
it? How fur down be yees goin'?" The Doc- 
tor replied that we were going nine hundred; 
whereat the man of explosives gave vent to 
his feelings in a prolonged whistle, then a horse 
laugh, and "Oh come, now! Don' be givin' 
us taffy! Say, hones' Injun, how fur down air 
yew fellers goin', anyhow?" It was with some 
difficulty that he could comprehend the fact. A 
hundred miles on the river was a great outing 
for this village lad; nine hundred was rather 
beyond his comprehension, although he finally 
compromised by " allowing" that we might 
be going as far as Cincinnati. Wouldn't the 
Doctor go into partnership with him? He had 
no caps for his cartridges, and if the Doctor 
would buy caps and "stan' in with him on the 
cost of the glysereen, " they would, regardless 
of Ohio statutes, blow up the fish in unfre- 
quented portions of the river, and make two 
3 



34 On the Storied Ohio 

hundred dollars apiece by carrying the spoils 
in to Wheeling. The Doctor, as a law-abiding 
citizen, good-naturedly declined; and upon my 
return to the flat, the Dynamiter was handing 
the Boy a huge stick of barber-pole candy, 
saying, ''Well, yew fellers, we'll part friends, 
anyhow — but sorry yew won't go in on this 
spec'; there's right smart money in 't, 'n' don' 
yer fergit it!" 

By the middle of the afternoon we reached 
the boundary line (40 miles) between Pennsyl- 
vania on the east and Ohio and West Virginia 
on the west. The last Pennsylvania settle- 
ments are a half mile above the boundary — 
Smith's Ferry (right), an old and somewhat 
decayed village, on a broad, low bottom at the 
mouth of the picturesque Little Beaver Creek;* 
and Georgetown (left), a prosperous-looking, 
sedate town, with tidy lawns running down to 
the edge of the terrace, below which is a shelv- 
ing stone beach of generous width. Two high 
iron towers supporting the cable of a current 
ferry add dignity to the twin settlements. A 

* On this creek was the hunting-cabin of the Seneca 
(Mingo) chief, Half King, who sent a message of welcome to 
Washington, when the latter was on his way to Great Mead- 
ows (i754)- 



~\JEAR East Liverpool, Ohio, forty- five miles below Pitts- 
-*- * burg. The hills still closely approach the river banks, 
although bottoms now frequently occur. The stream here 
flows between West Virginia and Ohio. 



West Virginia 35 

stone monument, six feet high, just observable 
through the willows on the right shore, marks 
the boundary; while upon the left bank, sur- 
mounting a high, rock-strewn beach, is the 
dilapidated frame house of a West Virginia 
" cracker," through whose garden-patch the 
line takes its way, unobserved and unthought 
of by pigs, chickens, and children, which in 
hopeless promiscuity swarm the interstate 
premises. 

For many days to come we are to have 
Ohio on the right bank and West Virginia on 
the left. There is no perceptible change, of 
course, in the contour of the rugged hills which 
hem us in; yet somehow it stirs the blood to 
reflect that quite within the recollection of all 
of us in Pilgrim's crew, save the Boy, that left 
bank was the house of bondage, and that right 
the land of freedom, and this river of ours the 
highway between. 

East Liverpool (44 miles) and Wellsville 
(48 miles) are long stretches of pottery and 
tile-making works, both of them on the Ohio 
shore. There is nothing there to lure us, how- 
ever, and we determined to camp on the banks 
of Yellow Creek (51 miles), a peaceful little 
Ohio stream some two rods in width, its mouth 



36 On the Storied Ohio 

crossed by two great iron spans, for railway 
and highway. But although Yellow Creek 
winds most gracefully and is altogether a 
charming bit of rustic water, deep-set amid 
picturesque slopes of field and wood, we fail 
to find upon its banks an appropriate camping- 
place. Upon one side a country road closely 
skirts the shore, and on the other a railway, 
while for the mile or more we pushed along 
small farmsteads almost abutted. Hence we 
retrace our path to the great river, and, drop- 
ping down-stream for two miles, find what we 
seek upon the lower end of the chief of Kneist- 
ly's Cluster — two islands on the West Virginia 
side of the channel. 

It is storied ground, this neighborhood of 
ours. Over there at the mouth of Yellow 
Creek was, a hundred and twenty years ago, 
the camp of Logan, the Mingo chief; opposite, 
on the West Virginia shore, Baker's Bottom, 
where occurred the treacherous massacre of 
Logan's family. The tragedy is interwoven 
with the history of the trans- Alleghany border; 
and schoolboys have in many lands and tongues 
recited the pathetic defense of the poor Mingo, 
who, more sinned against than sinning, was 
crushed in the inevitable struggle between 



A World of Woodland 37 

savagery and civilization. ' ' Who is there to 
mourn for Logan?" 

We are high and dry on our willowed island. 
Above, just out of sight, are moored a brace 
of steam pile-drivers engaged in strengthening 
the dam which unites us with Baker's Bottom. 
To the left lies a broad stretch of gravel strand, 
beyond which is the narrow water fed by the 
overflow of the dam; to the right, the broad 
steamboat channel rolls between us and the 
Ohio hills, while the far-reaching vista down- 
stream is a feast of shade and tint, by land and 
water, with the lights and smoke of New Cum- 
berland and Sloan's Station faintly discernible 
near the horizon. All about us lies a beautiful 
world of woodland. The whistle of quails in- 
numerable broke upon us in the twilight, suc- 
ceeding to the calls of rose-breasted grosbeaks 
and a goodly company of daylight followers; in 
this darkening hour, the low, plaintive note of 
the whip-poor-will is heard on every hand, 
now and then interrupted by the hoarse bark 
of owls. There is a gentle tinkling of cow- 
bells on the Ohio shore, and on both are human 
voices confused by distance. All pervading is 
the deep, sullen roar of a great wing-dam, a 
half mile or so down-stream. 



38 On the Storied Ohio 

The camp is gypsy-like. Our washing lies 
spread on bushes, where it will catch the first 
peep of morning sun. Perishable provisions 
rest in notches of trees, where the cool evening 
breeze will strike them. Seated upon the 
"grub" box, I am writing up our log by aid of 
the lantern hung from a branch overhead, 
while W — , ever busy, sits by with her mend- 
ing. Lying in the moonlight, which through 
the sprawling willows gayly checkers our sand 
bank, the Doctor and the Boy are discussing 
the doings of Br'er Rabbit — for we are in the 
Southland now, and may any day meet good 
Uncle Remus. 



CHAPTER IV. 

An industrial region — Steubenville — Min- 
go Bottom — In a steel mill — Indian 
character. 

Mingo Junction, Ohio, Wednesday, May 
9th. — We had a cold night upon our island. 
Upon arising this morning, a heavy fog en- 
veloped us, at first completely veiling the sun; 
soon it became faintly visible, a great ball of 
burnished copper reflected in the dimpled flood 
which poured between us and the Ohio shore. 
Weeds and willows were sopping wet, as was 
also our wash, and the breakfast fire was a 
comfortable companion. But by the time we 
were off, the cloud had lifted, and the sun 
gushed out with promise of a warm day. 

Throughout the morning, Pilgrim glided 
through a thickly settled district, reminding 
us of the Monongahela. Sewer-pipe and vit- 
rified-brick works, and iron and steel plants, 
abound on the narrow bottoms. The factories 
and mills themselves generally wear a pros- 
39 



4o On the Storied Ohio 

perous look; but the dependent towns vary in 
appearance, from clusters of shabby, down-at- 
the-heel cabins, to lines of neat and well- 
painted houses and shops. 

We visited the vitrified-brick works at New 
Cumberland, W. Va. (56 miles), where the 
proprietor kindly explained his methods, and 
talked freely of his business. It was the old 
story, too close a competition for profit, 
although the use of brick pavements is fast 
spreading. Fire clay available for the purpose 
is abundant on the banks of the Ohio all the 
way from Pittsburg to Kingston (60 miles). 
A few miles below New Cumberland, on the 
Ohio shore, we inspected the tile works at 
Freeman, and admired the dexterity which the 
workmen had attained. 

But what interested us most of all was the 
appalling havoc which these clay and iron in- 
dustries are making with the once beautiful 
banks of the river. Each of them has a large 
daily output of debris, which is dumped un- 
mercifully upon the water's edge in heaps from 
fifty to a hundred feet high. Sometimes for 
nearly a mile in length, the natural bank is 
deep buried out of sight; and we have from 
our canoe naught but a dismal wall of rubbish, 



Forest-mantled Slopes 41 

crowding upon the river to the uttermost limit 
of governmental allowance. Fifty years hence, 
if these enterprises multiply at the present 
ratio, and continue their present methods, the 
Upper Ohio will roll between continuous banks 
of clay and iron offal, down to Wheeling and 
beyond. 

Before noon we had left behind us this in- 
dustrial region, and were again in rustic sur- 
roundings. The wind had gone down, the 
atmosphere was oppressively warm, the sun's 
reflection from the glassy stream came with 
almost scalding effect upon our faces. We 
had rigged an awning over some willow hoops, 
but it could not protect us from this reflection. 
For an hour or two — one may as well be 
honest — we fairly sweltered upon our pilgrim- 
age, until at last a light breeze ruffled the 
water and brought blessed relief. 

The hills are not as high as hitherto, and 
are more broken. Yet they have a certain 
majestic sweep, and for the most part are 
forest-mantled from base to summit. Between 
them the river winds with noble grace, contin- 
ually giving us fresh vistas, often of surpassing 
loveliness. The bottoms are broader now, 
and frequently semicircular, with fine farms 



42 On the Storied Ohio 

upon them, and prosperous villages nestled in 
generous groves. Many of the houses betoken 
age, or what passes for it in this relatively new 
country, being of the colonial pattern, with 
fan-shaped windows above the doors, Grecian 
pillars flanking the front porch, and wearing 
the air of comfortable respectability. 

Beautiful islands lend variety to the scene, 
some of them mere willowed "tow-heads" 
largely submerged in times of flood, while 
others are of a permanent character, often 
occupied by farms. We have with us a copy 
of Cuming's Western Pilot (Cincinnati, 1834), 
which is still a practicable guide for the Ohio, 
as the river's shore lines are not subject to so 
rapid changes as those of the Mississippi; 
but many of the islands in Cuming's are not 
now to be found, having been swept away in 
floods, and we encounter few new ones. It 
is clear that the islands are not so numerous 
as sixty years ago. The present works of the 
United States Corps of Engineers tend to per- 
manency in the status quo; doubtless the gov- 
ernment map of 1 88 1 will remain an authori- 
tative chart for a half century or more to come. 

W — 's enthusiasm for botany frequently 
takes us ashore. Landing at the foot of some 



Botanizing 43 

eroded steep which, with ragged charm, rises 
sharply from the gravelly beach, we fasten 
Pilgrim's painter to a stone, and go scrambling 
over the hillside in search of flowers, bearing 
in mind the Boy's constant plea, to "Get only 
one of a kind," and leave the rest for seed; 
for other travelers may come this way, and 
'tis a sin indeed to exterminate a botanical 
rarity. But we find no rarities to-day — only 
Solomon's seal, trillium, wild ginger, cranebill, 
jack-in-the-pulpit, wild columbine. Poison 
ivy is on every hand, in these tangled woods, 
with ferns of many varieties — chiefly maiden- 
hair, walking leaf, and bladder. The view 
from projecting rocks, in these lofty places, is 
ever inspiring: the country spread out below 
us, as in a relief map; the great glistening 
river winding through* its hilly trough; a 
rumpled country for a few miles on either side, 
gradually trending into broad plains, checkered 
with fields on which farmsteads and rustic 
villages are the chessmen. 

At one o'clock we were at Steubenville, 
Ohio (67 miles), where the broad stoned wharf 
leads sharply up to the smart, well-built, sub- 
stantial town of some sixteen thousand inhab- 
itants. W — and I had some shopping to do 



44 On the Storied Ohio 

there, while the Doctor and the Boy remained 
down at the inevitable wharf-boat, and gos- 
siped with the philosophical agent, who be- 
moaned the decadence of steamboat traffic in 
general, and the rapidly falling stage of water 
in particular. 

Three miles below Steubenville is Mingo 
Junction, where we are the guests of a friend 
who is superintendent of the iron and steel 
works here. The population of Mingo is 
twenty-five hundred. From seven to twelve 
hundred are employed in the works, according 
to the exigencies of business. Ten per cent 
of them are Hungarians and Slavonians — a 
larger proportion would be dangerous, our host 
avers, because of the tendency of these people 
to " run the town" when sufficiently numerous 
to make it possible. The Slavs in the iron 
towns come to America for a few years, intent 
solely on saving every dollar within reach. 
They are willing to work for wages which from 
the American standard seem low, but to them 
almost fabulous; herd together in surprising 
promiscuity; maintain a low scale of clothing 
and diet, often to the ruin of health; and 
eventually return to Eastern Europe, where 
their savings constitute a little fortune upon 



Fit for the Boneyard 45 

which they can end their days in ease. This 
sort of competition is fast degrading legitimate 
American labor. Its regulation ought not to 
be thought impossible. 

A visit to a great steel-making plant, in full 
operation, is an event in a man's life. Par- 
ticularly remarkable is the weird spectacle 
presented at night, with the furnaces fiercely 
gleaming, the fresh ingots smoking hot, the 
Bessemer converter "blowing off," the great 
cranes moving about like things of life, bearing 
giant kettles of molten steel; and amidst it 
all, human life held so cheaply. Nearer to 
mediaeval notions of hell comes this fiery scene 
than anything imagined by Dante. The work- 
ing life of one of these men is not over ten 
years, B — says. A decade of this intense 
heat, compared to which a breath of outdoor 
air in the close mill-yard, with the midsummer 
sun in the nineties, seems chilly, wears a man 
out — "only fit for the boneyard then, sir," 
was the laconic estimate of an intelligent boss 
whom I questioned on the subject. 

Wages run from ninety cents to five dollars 
a day, with far more at the former rate than 
the latter. A ninety-cent man working in a 
place so hot that were water from a hose turned 



46 On the Storied Ohio 

upon him it would at once be resolved into 
scalding steam, deserves our sympathy. It is 
pleasing to find in our friend, the superinten- 
dent, a strong fellow-feeling for his men, and 
a desire to do all in his power to alleviate their 
condition. He has accomplished much in 
improving the morale of the town; but deep- 
seated, inexorable economic conditions, ap- 
parently beyond present control, render nuga- 
tory any attempts to better the financial 
condition of the underpaid majority. 

Mingo Junction — " Mingo Bottom" of old — 
was an interesting locality in frontier days. 
On this fertile river bench was long one of the 
strongest of the Mingo villages. During the 
last week of May, 1782, Crawford's little army 
rendezvoused here, en route to Sandusky, a 
hundred and fifty miles distant, and intent on 
the destruction of the Wyandot towns. But 
the Indians had not been surprised, and the 
army was driven back with slaughter, reaching 
Mingo the middle of June, bereft of its com- 
mander. Crawford, who was a warm friend 
of Washington, suffered almost unprecedented 
torture at the stake, his fate sending a thrill 
of horror through all the Western settlements. 

Let us not be too harsh in our judgment of 



Red Man and White Man 47 

these red Indians. At first, the white colo- 
nists from Europe were regarded by them as 
of supernatural origin, and hospitality, vener- 
ation, and confidence were displayed toward 
the new-comers. But the mortality of the 
Europeans was soon made painfully evident 
to them. When the early Spaniards, and 
afterward the English, kidnaped tribesmen 
for sale into slavery, or for use as captive 
guides, and even murdered them on slight 
provocation, distrust and hatred naturally suc- 
ceeded to the sentiment of awe. Like many 
savage races, like the earlier Romans, the In- 
dian looked upon the member of every tribe 
with which he had not made a formal peace 
as a public enemy; hence he felt justified in 
wreaking his vengeance on the race, whenever 
he failed to find individual offenders. He was 
exceptionally cruel, his mode of warfare was 
skulking, he could not easily be reached in the 
forest fastnesses which he alone knew well, 
and his strokes fell heaviest on women and 
children; so that whites came to fear and un- 
speakably to loathe the savage, and often 
added greatly to the bitterness of the struggle 
by retaliation in kind. The white borderers 
themselves were frequently brutal, reckless, 



48 On the Storied Ohio 

lawless; and under such conditions, clashing 
was inevitable. But worse agents of discord 
than the agricultural colonists were the itiner- 
ants who traveled through the woods visiting 
the tribes, exchanging goods for furs; these 
often cheated and robbed the Indian, taught 
him the use of intoxicants, bullied and brow- 
beat him, appropriated his women, and in 
general introduced serious demoralization into 
the native camps. The bulk of the whites 
doubtless intended to treat the Indian honor- 
ably; but the forest traders were beyond the 
pale of law, and news of the details of 
their transactions seldom reached the coast 
settlements. 

As a neighbor, the Indian was difficult to 
deal with, whether in the negotiation of treaties 
of amity, or in the purchase of lands. Having 
but a loose system of government, there was 
no really responsible head, and no compact 
was secure from the interference of malcon- 
tents, who would not be bound by treaties 
made by the chiefs. The English felt that the 
red men were not putting the land to its full 
use, that much of the territory was growing up 
as a waste, that they were best entitled to it 
who could make it the most productive. On 



Civilization against Savagery 49 

the other hand, the earlier cessions of land 
were made under a total misconception; the 
Indians supposed that the new-comers would, 
after a few years of occupancy, pass on and 
leave the tract again to the natives. There 
was no compromise possible between races 
with precisely opposite views of property in 
land. The struggle was inevitable — civiliza- 
tion against savagery. No sentimental notions 
could prevent it. It was in the nature of 
things that the weaker must give way. The 
Indian was a formidable antagonist, and there 
were times when the result of the struggle 
seemed uncertain; but in the end he went to 
the wall. In judging the vanquished enemy 
of our civilization, let us not underestimate his 
intellect, or the many good qualities which 
were mingled with his savage vices, or fail to 
credit him with sublime courage, and a tribal 
patriotism which no disaster could cool. 
4 



CHAPTER V. 

Houseboat life — Decadence of steam- 
boat traffic — Wheeling, and Wheeling 
Creek. 

Above Moundsville, W. Va., Thursday, 
May ioth. — Our friends saw us off at the 
gravelly beach just below the " works." There 
was a slight breeze ahead, but the atmosphere 
was agreeable, and Pilgrim bore a happy crew, 
now as brown as gypsies; the first painful effects 
of sunburn are over, and we are hardened in 
skin and muscle to any vicissitudes which are 
likely to be met upon our voyage. Rough 
weather, river mud, and all the other exigencies 
of a moving camp, are beginning to tell upon 
clothing; we are becoming like gypsies in rai- 
ment, as well as color. But what a soul- 
satisfying life is this gypsy ing! We possess 
the world, while afloat on the Ohio! 

There are, in the course of the summer, so 
many sorts of people traveling by the river,— 
steamboat passengers, campers, fishers, house- 
50 



Skiff Lore 5 1 

boat folk, and what not, — that we attract little 
attention of ourselves, but Pilgrim is indeed a 
curiosity hereabout. What remarks we over- 
hear are about her, — " Honey skiff, that!" 
-Right smart skiff!" -Good skiff for her 
place, but no good for this yere river!" and 
so on. She is a lap-streak, square-sterned 
craft, of white cedar three-eighths of an inch 
thick; fifteen feet in length and four of beam; 
weighs just a hundred pounds; comfortably 
holds us and our luggage, with plenty of 
spare room to move about in; is easily pro- 
pelled, and as stanch as can be made. Upon 
these waters, we meet nothing like her. Not 
counting the curious floating boxes and 
punts, which are knocked together out of 
driftwood, by boys and poor whites, and are 
numerous all along shore, the regulation 
Ohio river skiff is built on graceful lines, 
but of inch boards, heavily ribbed, and is a 
sorry weight to handle. The contention is, 
that to withstand the swash of steamboat 
wakes breaking upon the shore, and the rush 
of drift in times of flood, a heavy skiff is nec- 
essary; there is a tendency to decry Pilgrim 
as a plaything, unadapted to the great river. 
A reasonable degree of care at all times, how- 



52 On the Storied Ohio 

ever, and keeping the boat drawn high on the 
beach when not in use, — such care as we 
are familiar with upon our Wisconsin inland 
lakes, — would render the employment of such 
as she quite practicable, and greatly lessen the 
labor of rowing on this waterway. 

The houseboats, dozens of which we see 
daily, interest us greatly. They are scows, or 
"flats," greatly differing in size, with low- 
ceilinged cabins built upon them — sometimes 
of one room, sometimes of half a dozen, and 
varying in character from a mere shanty to a 
well-appointed cottage. Perhaps the greater 
number of these craft are afloat in the river, 
and moored to the bank, with a gang-plank 
running to shore; others are "beached," hav- 
ing found a comfortable nook in some higher 
stage of water, and been fastened there, 
propped level with timbers and driftwood. 
Among the houseboat folk are young working 
couples starting out in life, and hoping ulti- 
mately to gain a foothold on land; unfortunate 
people, who are making a fresh start; men 
regularly employed in riverside factories and 
mills; invalids, who, at small expense, are 
trying the fresh-air cure; others, who drift up 
and down the Ohio, seeking casual work; and 



Houseboat Folk 53 

legitimate fishermen, who find it convenient to 
be near their nets, and to move about accord- 
ing to the needs of their calling. But a goodly 
proportion of these boats are inhabited by the 
lowest class of the population, — poor "crack- 
ers " who have managed to scrape together 
enough money to buy, or enough energy and 
driftwood to build, such a craft; and, near or 
at the towns, many are occupied by gamblers, 
illicit liquor dealers, and others who, while 
plying nefarious trades, make a pretense of 
following the occupation of the Apostles. 

Houseboat people, whether beached or afloat, 
pay no rent, and heretofore have paid no taxes. 
Kentucky has recently passed, more as a police 
regulation than as a means of revenue, an act 
levying a State tax of twenty-five dollars upon 
each craft of this character; and the other 
commonwealths abutting upon the river are 
considering the policy of doing likewise. The 
houseboat men have, however, recently formed 
a protective association, and propose to fight 
the new laws on constitutional grounds, the 
contention being that the Ohio is a national 
highway, and that commerce upon it cannot 
be hampered by State taxes. This view does 
not, however, affect the taxability of ' 'beached" 



54 On the Storied Ohio 

boats, which are clearly squatters on State 
soil. 

Both in town and country, the riffraff of 
the houseboat element are in disfavor. It is 
not uncommon for them, beached or tied up, 
to remain unmolested in one spot for years, 
with their pigs, chickens, and little garden 
patch about them, mayhap a swarm or two of 
bees, and a cow enjoying free pasturage along 
the weedy bank or on neighboring hills. Oc- 
casionally, however, as the result of spasmodic 
local agitation, they are by wholesale ordered 
to betake themselves to some more hospitable 
shore; and not a few farmers, like our friend 
at Beaver River, are quick to pattern after the 
city police, and order their visitors to move on 
the moment they seek a mooring. For the 
truth is, the majority of those who "live on 
the river," as the phrase goes, have the repu- 
tation of being pilferers; farmers tell sad tales 
of despoiled chicken-roosts and vegetable gar- 
dens. From fishing, shooting, collecting chance 
driftwood, and leading a desultory life along 
shore, like the wreckers of old they naturally 
fall into this thieving habit. Having neither 
rent nor taxes to pay, and for the most part 
not voting, and having no share in the polit- 



Floating Shops 55 

ical or social life of landsmen, they are in the 
State, yet not of it, — a class unto themselves, 
whose condition is well worthy the study of 
economists. 

Interspersed with the houseboat folk, al- 
though of different character, are those whose 
business leads them to dwell as nomads upon 
the river — merchant peddlers, who spend a 
day or two at some rustic landing, while scour- 
ing the neighborhood for oil-barrels and junk, 
which they load in great heaps upon the flat 
roofs of their cabins, giving therefor, at goodly 
prices, groceries, crockery, and notions, — 
often bartering their wares for eggs and dairy 
products, to be disposed of to passing steam- 
ers, whose clerks in turn "pack" them for the 
largest market on their route; blacksmiths, 
who moor their floating shops to country beach 
or village levee, wherever business can be had; 
floating theaters and opera companies, with 
large barges built as play-houses, towed from 
town to town by their gaudily-painted tugs, on 
which may occasionally be perched the vocif- 
erous ' ' steam piano " of our circus days, 
"whose soul-stirring music can be heard for 
four miles;" traveling sawyers, with old steam- 
boats made over into sawmills, employed by 



56 On the Storied Ohio 

farmers to "work up" into lumber such logs 
as they can from time to time bring down to 
the shore — the product being oftenest used in 
the neighborhood, but occasionally rafted, and 
floated to the nearest large town; and a mis- 
cellaneous lot of traveling craftsmen who live 
and work afloat, — chairmakers, upholsterers, 
feather and mattress renovators, photogra- 
phers, — who land at the villages, scatter abroad 
their advertising cards, and stay so long as the 
ensuing patronage warrants. 

A motley assortment, these neighbors of ours, 
an uncultivated field for the fiction writers. 
We have struck up acquaintance with many 
of them, and they are not bad fellows, as the 
world goes — philosophers all, and loquacious 
to a degree. But they cannot, for the life of 
them, fathom the mystery of our cruise. We 
are not in trade? we are not fishing? we 
are not canvassers? we are not show-people? 
"What 'n 'tarnation air ye, anny way? Oh, 
come now! No fellers is do'n' th' river fur 
fun, that's sartin — ye're jist gov'm'nt agints! 
Thet's my way o' think'n'. Well, 'f ye kin 
find fun in 't, then done go ahead, I say! But 
all same, we'll be friends, won't we? Yew bet, 
strangers! Ye're welcome t' all in this yere 



/^R AFT of this character are to be met throughout the 

length of the river. They are respectively adapted to 

all manner of callings — from horseshoeing to sazvmilling, 

junkshops to country stores , photograph galleries to comic opera 

companies. 



The Fire Canoe 57 

shanty boat — ain't no bakky 'bout yer close, 
yew fellers?" We meet with abundant cour- 
tesy of this rude sort, and weaponless sleep 
well o' nights, fearing naught from our comrades 
for the nonce. 

We again have railways on either bank. 
The iron horse has almost eclipsed the ' ' fire 
canoe," as the Indians picturesquely styled the 
steamboat. We occasionally see boats tied 
up to the wharves, evidently not in commission; 
but, in actual operation, we seldom meet or 
pass over one or two daily. To be sure, the 
low stage of water, — from six to eight feet 
thus far, and falling daily, — and the coal strike, 
militate against navigation interests. But the 
truth is, there is very little business now left 
for steamboats, beyond the movement of coal, 
stone, bricks, and other bulky material, some 
way freight, and a light passenger traffic. The 
railroads are quicker and surer, and of course 
competition lowers the charges. 

The heavy manufacturing interests along the 
river now depend little upon the steamers, 
although originally established here because 
of them. I asked our friend, the superinten- 
dent at Mingo, what advantage was gained by 
having his plant upon the river. He replied: 



58 On the Storied Ohio 

"We can get all the water we want, and we 
use a great deal of it; and it is convenient to 
empty our slag upon the banks; but our chief 
interest here is in the fact that Mingo is a rail- 
way junction. " By rail he gets his coal and 
ore, and ships away his product. Were the 
coal to come a considerable distance, the river 
would be the cheaper road; but it is obtained 
from neighboring hill mines that are practically 
owned by the railways. This coal, by the 
way, costs $1.10 at the shaft mouth, and 
$1.75 landed at the Mingo works. As for the 
sewer-pipe, brick, and pottery works, they are 
along stream because of the great beds of clay 
exposed by the erosion of the river. 

It is fortunate for the stability of these 
towns, that the Ohio flows along the trans- 
continental pathway westward, so that the 
great railway lines may serve them without 
deflection from their natural course. Had 
the great stream flowed south instead of west, 
the industries of the valley doubtless would 
gradually have been removed to the transverse 
highways of the new commerce, save where 
these latter crossed the river, and thus have 
left scores of once thriving communities mere 
'longshore wrecks of their former selves. This 



At Wheeling 59 

is not possible, now. The steamboat traffic 
may still further waste, until the river is no 
longer serviceable save as a continental drain- 
age ditch; but, chiefly because of its railways, 
the Ohio Valley will continue to be the seat 
of an industrial population which shall wax fat 
upon the growth of the nation's needs. 

By the middle of the afternoon, we were at 
Wheeling (91 miles). The town has fifty 
thousand inhabitants, is substantially built, of 
a distinctly Southern aspect; well stretched 
out along the river, but narrow; with gaunt, 
treeless, gully-washed hills of clay rising ab- 
ruptly behind, giving the place a most forbid- 
ding appearance from the water. There are 
several fine bridges spanning the Ohio; and 
Wheeling Creek, which empties on the lower 
edge of town, is crossed by a maze of steel 
spans and stone arches; the well-paved wharf, 
sloping upward from the Ohio, is nearly as 
broad and imposing as that of Pittsburg;* 
houseboats are here by the score, some of them 

* Upon the Ohio and kindred rivers, the terra "wharf" 
applies to the river beach when graded and paved, ready for 
the reception of steamers. Such a wharf must not be con- 
founded with a lake or seaside wharf, a staging projected into 
the water. 



60 On the Storied Ohio 

the haunts of fishing clubs, as we judge from 
the names emblazoned on their sides — "Mys- 
tic Crew," " South Side Club," and the like. 

For the first time upon our tour, negroes 
are abundant upon the streets and lounging 
along the river front. They vary in color from 
yellow to inky blackness, and in raiment from 
the ' ' dude, " smart in straw hat, collars and 
cuffs, and white-frilled shirt with glass-dia- 
mond pin, to the steamboat roustabout, all 
slouch and rags, and evil-eyed. 

Wheeling Island (300 acres), up to thirty 
years ago mentioned in travelers' journals as a 
rare beauty-spot, is to-day thick-set with cot- 
tages of factory hands and small villas, and 
commonplace; while smoky Bridgeport, oppo- 
site on the Ohio side, was from our vantage- 
point a mere smudge upon the landscape. 

Wheeling Creek is famous in Western his- 
tory. The three Zane brothers, Ebenezer, 
Jonathan, and Silas, — typical, old-fashioned 
names these, bespeaking the God-fearing, 
Bible-loving, Scotch-Presbyterian stock from 
which sprang so large a proportion of trans- 
Alleghany pioneers, — explored this region as 
early as 1769, built cabins, and made improve- 
ments — Silas at the forks of the creek, and 



The Siege of Wheeling 61 

Ebenezer and Jonathan at the mouth. Dur- 
ing three or four years, it was a hard fight 
between them and the Indians; but, though 
several times driven from the scene, the Zane 
brothers stubbornly reappeared, and rebuilt 
their burned habitations. 

Before the Revolutionary War broke out, 
the fortified home of the Zanes, at the creek 
mouth, was a favorite stopping stage in the 
savage-haunted wilderness; and many a trav- 
eler in those early days has left us in his journal 
a thankful account of his tarrying here. The 
Zane stockade developed into Fort Fincastle, 
in Lord Dunmore's time; then, Fort Henry, 
during the Revolution; and everyone who 
knows his Western history at all has read of 
the three famous sieges of Wheeling (1777, 
1 78 1, and 1782), and the daring deeds of its 
men and women, which help illumine the 
pages of border annals. Finally, by 1784, the 
fort at Wheeling, that had never surrendered, 
was demolished as no longer necessary, for the 
wall of savage resistance was now pushed far 
westward. Wheeling had become the western 
end of a wagon road across the Panhandle, 
from Redstone, and here were fitted out many 
flatboat expeditions for the lower Ohio; later, 



62 On the Storied Ohio 

in steamboat days, the shallow water of the 
upper river caused Wheeling to be in midsum- 
mer the highest port attainable; and to this 
day it holds its ground as the upper terminus 
of several steamboat lines. 

Below Wheeling are several miles of factory 
towns nestled by the strand, and numerous 
coal tipples, with their begrimed villages. 
Fishermen have been frequent to-day, in 
houseboats of high and low degree, and in 
land camps composed of tents and board shan- 
ties, with rows of seines and tarred pound-nets 
stretched in the sun to dry; tow-headed chil- 
dren abound, almost as nude as the pigs and 
dogs and chickens amongst which they waddle 
and roll; women-folk busy themselves with 
the multifarious cares of home-keeping, while 
their lords are in shady nooks mending nets, 
or listlessly examining traut lines which ap- 
pear to yield but empty hooks; they tell us 
that when the river is falling, fish bite not, and 
yet they serenely angle on, dreaming their 
lives away. 

A half mile above Big Grave Creek (101 
miles), we, too, hurry into camp on a shelving 
bank of sand, deep-fringed with willows; for 
over the western hills thunder-clouds are rising, 



A Threatened Storm 63 

with wind gusts. Level fields stretch back of 
us for a quarter of a mile, to the hills which 
bound the bottom; at our front door majes- 
tically rolls the growing river, perhaps a third 
of a mile in width, black with the reflection of 
the sky, and wrinkled now and then with 
squalls which scurry over its bubbling surface.* 
The storm does not break, but the bending 
tree-tops crone, and toads innumerable rend 
the air with their screaming whistles. We 
had great ado, during the cooking of dinner, 
to prevent them from hopping into our little 
stove, as it gleamed brightly in the early dusk; 
and have adopted special precautions to keep 
them from the tent, as they jump about in the 
tall grass, appeasing their insectivorous ap- 
petites. 

* It was in this neighborhood, a mile or two above our 
camp, where the bottom is narrower, that Capt. William 
Foreman and twenty other Virginia militiamen were killed 
in an Indian ambuscade, Sept. 27, 1777. An inscribed stone 
monument was erected on the spot in 1835, but we could not 
find it. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Big Grave — Washington, and Round 
Bottom — A lazy man's Paradise — Cap- 
tina Creek — George Rogers Clark at 
Fish Creek — Southern types. 

Near Fishing Creek, Friday, May nth. 
— There had been rain during the night, with 
fierce wind gusts, but during breakfast the 
atmosphere quieted, and we had a genial, 
semi-cloudy morning. 

Off at 8 o'clock, Pilgrim's crew were soon 
exploring Moundsville. There are five thou- 
sand people in this old, faded, countrified 
town. They show you with pride the State 
Penitentiary of West Virginia, a solemn-look- 
ing pile of dark gray stone, with the feeble 
battlements and towers common to American 
prison architecture. But the chief feature of 
the place is the great Indian mound — the " Big 
Grave" of early chroniclers. This earthwork 
is one of the largest now remaining in the 
United States, being sixty-eight feet high and 

64 



The Big Grave 65 

a hundred in diameter at the base, and has for 
over a century attracted the attention of trav- 
elers and archaeologists. 

We found it at the end of a straggling street, 
on the edge of the town, a quarter of a mile 
back from the river. Around the mound has 
been left a narrow plat of ground, utilized as 
a cornfield; and the stout picket fence which 
encloses it bears peremptory notice that ad- 
mission is forbidden. However, as the pro- 
prietor was not easily accessible, we exercised 
the privilege of historical pilgrims, and, letting 
ourselves in through the gate, picked our way 
through rows of corn, and ascended the great 
cone. It is covered with a heavy growth of 
white oaks, some of them three feet in diam- 
eter, among which the path picturesquely 
ascends. The summit is fifty-five feet in diam- 
eter, and the center somewhat depressed, like 
a basin. From the middle of this basin a 
shaft some twenty-five feet in diameter has 
been sunk by explorers, for a distance of per- 
haps fifty feet; at one time, a level tunnel 
connected the bottom of this shaft with the 
side of the cone, but it has been mostly oblit- 
erated. A score of years ago, tunnel and shaft 
were utilized as the leading attractions of a 
5 



66 On the Storied Ohio 

beer garden — to such base uses may a great 
historical landmark descend! 

Dickens, who apparently wrote the greater 
part of his American Notes while suffering 
from dyspepsia, has a note of appreciation for 
the Big Grave: ". . . the host of Indians who 
lie buried in a great mound yonder — so old that 
mighty oaks and other forest trees have struck 
their roots into its earth; and so high that it 
is a hill, even among the hills that Nature 
planted around it. The very river, as though 
it shared one's feelings of compassion for the 
extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly here, in 
their blessed ignorance of white existence, 
hundreds of years ago, steals out of its way to 
ripple near this mound; and there are few 
places where the Ohio sparkles more brightly 
than in the Big Grave Creek. " 

There is a sharp bend in the river, just 
below Moundsville, with Dillon's Bottom 
stretching long and wide at the apex on the 
Ohio shore — flat green fields, dotted with little 
white farmsteads, each set low in its apple 
grove, and a convoluted wall of dark hills 
hemming them in along the northern horizon. 
Then below this comes Round Bottom, its 
counterpart on the West Virginia side, and 



Round Bottom 67 

coursing through it a pretty meadow creek, 
Butler's Run. 

Writes Washington, in 1781, to a corre- 
spondent who is thinking of renting lands in 
this region: " I have a small tract called the 
round bottom containing about 600 Acres, 
which would also let. It lyes on the Ohio, 
opposite to pipe Creek, and a little above Cap- 
teening." Across the half mile of river are 
the little levels and great slopes of the Ohio 
hills, through which breaks this same Pipe 
Creek; and hereabout Cresap's band murdered 
a number of inoffensive Shawanese, a tragedy 
which was one of the inciting causes of Lord 
Dunmore's War (1774). 

We crossed over into Ohio, and pulled up 
on the gravelly spit at the mouth of Pipe. 
While the others were botanizing high on the 
mountain side, I went along a beach path 
toward a group of whitewashed cabins, intent 
on replenishing the canteen. Upon opening 
the gate of one of them, two grizzly dogs came 
bounding out, threatening to test the strength 
of my corduroy trousers. The proprietor cau- 
tiously peered from a window, and, much to 
my relief, called off the animals. Satisfied, 
apparently, that I was not the visitor he ex- 



68 On the Storied Ohio 

pected, the fellow lounged out and sat upon 
the steps, where I joined him. He was a tall, 
raw-boned, loose-jointed young man, with a 
dirty, buttonless flannel shirt which revealed 
a hairy breast; upon his trousers hung a variety 
of patches, in many stages of grease and de- 
crepitude; a gray slouch hat shaded his little 
fishy eyes and hollow, yellow cheeks; and the 
snaky ends of his yellow mustache were stiff 
with accumulations of dried tobacco juice. 
His fat, waddling wife, in a greasy black gown, 
followed with bare feet, and, arms akimbo, 
listened in the open door. 

A coal company owns the rocky river front, 
here and at many places below, and lets these 
cabins to the poor-white element, so numerous 
on the Ohio's banks. The renter is privileged 
to cultivate whatever land he can clear on the 
rocky, precipitous slopes, which is seldom 
more than half an acre to the cabin; and he 
may, if he can afford a cow, let her run wild 
in the scrub. The coal vein, a few rods back 
of the house, is only a few inches thick, and 
poor in quality, but is freely resorted to by the 
cotters. He worked whenever he could find 
a job, my host said — in the coal mines and 



A Lazy Man's Paradise 69 

quarries, or on the bottom farms, or the rail- 
road which skirts the bank at his feet. 

1 'But I tell ye, sir, th' /talians and Hun- 
garians is spoil'n' this yere country fur white 
men; 'n' I do'n' see no prospect for hits be'n' 
better till they get shoved out uv 't!" Yet he 
said that life wasn't so hard here as it was in 
some parts he had heard tell of — the climate 
was mild, that he " 'lowed;" a fellow could go 
out and get a free bucket of coal from the hill- 
side "back yon;" he might get all the "light 
wood 'n' patchin' stuff" he wanted, from the 
river drift; could, when he "hankered after 
'em," catch fish off his own front-door yard; 
and pick up a dollar now and then at odd jobs, 
when the rent was to be paid, or the "oF 
woman " wanted a dress, or he a new coat. 

This is clearly the lazy man's Paradise. I 
do not remember to have heard that the South 
Sea Islanders, in the ante-missionary days, 
had an easier time of it than this. What new 
fortune will befall my friend when he gets the 
Italians and Hungarians "shoved out," and 
"things pick up a bit," I cannot conceive. 

A pleasing panorama he has from his door- 
way — across the river, the fertile fields of 
Round Bottom, once Washington's; Captina 



jo On the Storied Ohio 

Island, just below, long and thickly-willowed, 
dreamily afloat in a glassy sea, reflecting every 
change of light; the whole girt about with the 
wide uplands of the winding valley, and over- 
head the march of sunny clouds. 

Captina Creek (108 miles) is not far down 
on the Ohio bank, and beside it the little 
hamlet of Powhattan Point, with the West 
Virginia hills thereabout exceptionally high 
and steep, and wooded to the very top. Wash- 
ington, who knew the Ohio well, down to the 
Great Kanawha, wrote of this creek in 1770: 
" A pretty large creek on the west side, called 
by Nicholson [his interpreter] Fox-Grape-Vine, 
by others Captema creek, on which, eight miles 
up, is the town called Grape-Vine Town." 
Captina village is its white successor. But 
there were also Indians at the mouth of the 
creek; for when George Rogers Clark and his 
missionary companion, Jones, two years later 
camped opposite on," the Virginia shore, they 
went over to make a morning call on the na- 
tives, who repaid it in the evening, doubtless 
each time receiving freely from the white men's 
bounty. 

The next day was Sunday, and the travelers 
remained in camp, Jones recording in his jour- 



Running the Gauntlet ji 

nal that he " instructed what Indians came 
over." In the course of his prayer, the mis- 
sionary was particularly impressed by the atti- 
tude of the chief of Grape-Vine Town, named 
Frank Stephens, who professed to believe in 
the Christian God; and he naively writes, "I 
was informed that, all the time, the Indians 
looked very seriously at me." Jones appears 
to have been impressed also with the hardness 
of the beach, where they camped in the open, 
doubtless to avoid surprises: "Instead of 
feathers, my bed was gravel-stones, by the 
river side . . . which at first seemed not 
to suit me, but afterward it became more 
natural." 

In those days, traveling was beset with diffi- 
culties, both ashore and afloat. Eight years 
later (spring of 1780), three flatboats were 
descending the Ohio, laden with families in- 
tending to settle in Kentucky, when they suf- 
fered a common fate, being attacked by Indians 
off Captina Creek. Several men and a child 
were killed, and twenty-one persons were car- 
ried into captivity — among them, Catherine 
Malott, a girl in her teens, who subsequently 
became the wife of that most notorious of bor- 
der renegades, Simon Girty. 



J2 On the Storied Ohio 

On the West Virginia shore, not over a third 
of a mile below Captina Creek, empties Grave 
Yard Run, a modest rivulet. It would of itself 
not be noticeable amid the crowd of minor 
creeks and runs, coursing down to the great 
river through rugged ravines which corrugate 
the banks. But it has a history. Here, late 
in October or early in November, 1772, young 
George Rogers Clark made his first stake west 
of the Alleghanies, rudely cultivating a few 
acres of forest land on what is now called 
Cresap's Bottom, surveying for the neighbors, 
and in the evenings teaching their children in 
the little log cabin of his friend, Yates Con- 
well, at the mouth of Fish Creek, a few miles 
below. Fish Creek was in itself famous as 
one of the sections of the great Indian trail, 
' 'The Warrior Branch," which, starting in 
Tennessee, came northward through Kentucky 
and Southern Ohio, and, proceeding by way 
of this creek, crossed over to Dunkard Creek, 
thence to the mouth of Redstone. Wash- 
ington stopped at Conwell's in March or April, 
1774; but Clark was away from home at the 
time, and the " Father of his Country" never 
met the man who has been dubbed the < ' Wash- 
ington of the West." Lord Dunmore's War 



Floating Opera 73 

was hatching, and a few months later the Fish 
Creek surveyor and schoolmaster had entered 
upon his life work as an Indian fighter. 

At Bearsville (126 miles) we first meet a 
phenomenon common to the Ohio — the edges 
of the alluvial bottom being higher than the 
fields back of them, forming a natural levee, 
above which curiously rise to our view the 
spires and chimneys of the village. Harris' 
Journal (1803) made early note of this, and 
advanced an acceptable theory: "We fre- 
quently remarked that the banks are higher at 
the margin than at a little distance back. I 
account for it in this manner: Large trees, 
which are brought down the river by the inun- 
dations, are lodged upon the borders of the 
bank, but cannot be floated far upon the 
champaign, because obstructed by the growth 
of wood. Retaining their situation when the 
waters subside, they obstruct and detain the 
leaves and mud, which would else recoil into 
the stream, and thus, in process of time, form 
a bank higher than the interior flats." 

Tied up to Bearsville landing is a gayly 
painted barge, the home of Price's Floating 
Opera Company, and in front its towing- 
steamer, "Troubadour." A steam calliope is 



74 On the Storied Ohio 

part of the visible furniture of the establish- 
ment, and its praises as a noise-maker are 
sung in large type in the handbills which, with 
numerous colored lithographs of the perform- 
ers, adorn the shop windows in the neighboring 
river towns. 

Two miles farther down, on a high bank at 
the mouth of Fishing Creek, lies New Martins- 
ville, West Va. (127 miles), a rather shabby 
town of fifteen hundred souls. As W — and 
I passed up the main street, seeking for a 
grocery, we noticed that the public hall was 
being decorated for a dance to come off to- 
night; and placards advertising the event were 
everywhere rivaling the gaudy prints of the 
floating opera. 

Meanwhile, a talkative native was inter- 
viewing the Doctor, down at the river side. 
It required some good-natured fencing on the 
part of our skipper to prevent the Virginian 
from learning all about our respective families 
away back to the third generation. He was 
a short, chubby man, with a Dixie goatee, his 
flannel shirt negligee, and a wide-brimmed 
straw hat jauntily set on the back of his head. 
He was sociable, and sat astride of our beached 
prow, punctuating his remarks with squirts of 



Indian Mounds 75 

tobacco juice, and a bit of lath with which he 
meditatively tapped the gunwale; the mean- 
time, with some skill, casting pebbles into the 
water with his bare toes. " Ax'n yer pardon, 
mam!" he said, scrambling from his perch 
upon W — 's appearance; and then, pushing us 
off, he bowed with much Southern gallantry, 
and hat in hand begged we would come again 
to New Martinsville, and stay longer. 

The hills lining these reaches are lower than 
above, yet graceful in their sweeping lines. 
Conical mounds sometimes surmount them, 
relics of the prehistoric time when our Indians 
held to the curious fashion of building earth- 
works. We no longer entertain the notion 
that a separate and a prouder race of wild 
men than we know erected these tumuli. 
That: pleasant fiction has departed from us; 
but the works are none the less interesting, 
now that more is known of their origin. 

Two miles below New Martinsville, on the 
West Virginia shore, we pitch camp, just as 
the light begins to sink over the Ohio hills. 
The atmosphere is sweet with the odor of 
wild grape blossoms, and the willow also is in 
bloom. Poison ivy, to whose baneful touch 
fortunately none of us appear susceptible, grows 



76 On the Storied Ohio 

everywhere about. From the farmhouse on 
the narrow bottom to our rear comes the me- 
lodious tinkle-tinkle of cow bells. The oper- 
atic calliope is in full blast, at Bearsville, its 
shrieks and snorts coming down to us through 
four miles of space, all too plainly borne by 
the northern breeze; and now and then we 
hear the squeak of the New Martinsville riddles. 
There are no mosquitoes as yet, but burly May- 
chafers come stupidly dashing against our tent, 
and the toads are piping merrily. 



CHAPTER VII. 

In Dixie — Oil and natural gas, at Wit- 
ten's Bottom — The Long Reach — Pho- 
tographing crackers — Visitors in camp. 

Above Marietta, Saturday, May 12th. — 
Since the middle of yesterday afternoon we 
have been in Dixie, — that is, when we are on 
the West Virginia shore. The famous Mason 
and Dixon Line (lat. 39 43' 26") touches the 
Ohio at the mouth of Proctor's Run (121^ 
miles). 

There was a heavy fog this morning, on 
land and river. But through shifting rifts 
made by the morning breeze, we had kaleido- 
scopic, cloud-framed pictures of the dark, jut- 
ting headlands which hem us in; of little white 
cabins clustered by the country road which on 
either bank crawls along narrow terraces be- 
tween overtopping steeps and sprawling beach, 
or winds through fertile bottoms, according to 
whether the river approaches or recedes from 
its inclosing bluffs; of hillside fields, tipped at 
77 



yS On the Storied Ohio 

various angles of ascent, sometimes green with 
springing grain, but oftenest gray or brown or 
yellow, freshly planted, — charming patches of 
color, in this somber-hued world of sloping 
woodland. 

At Williamson's Island (134 miles) the fog 
lifted. The air was heavy with the odor of 
petroleum. All about us were the ugly, tow- 
ering derricks of oil and natural gas wells — 
Witten's Bottom on the right, with its abutting 
hills; the West Virginia woods across the river, 
and the maple-strewn island between, all cov- 
ered with scaffolds. The country looks like a 
rumpled fox-and-geese board, with pegs stuck 
all over it. A mile and a half below lies Sis- 
tersville, W. Va. , the emporium of this greasy 
neighborhood — great red oil-tanks and smoky 
refineries its chief est glory; crude and raw, like 
the product it handles. We landed at Wit- 
ten's Bottom, — W — , the Boy, and I, — while 
the Doctor, philosophically preferring to take 
the oily elephant for granted, piloted Pilgrim 
to the rendezvous a mile below. 

Oil was "struck" here two or three years 
ago, and now within a distance of a few miles 
there are hundreds of wells — "two hun'rd in 
this yere gravel alone, sir!" I was told by a 



Among the Oil Wells 79 

red-headed man in a red shirt, who lived with 
his numerous family in a twelve-feet-square 
box at the rear of a pumping engine. An en- 
gine serves several wells, — the tumbling-rods, 
rudely boxed in, stretching off through the 
fields and over the hills to wherever needed. 
The operatives dwell in little shanties scattered 
conveniently about; in front of each is a ver- 
tical half-inch pipe, six or eight feet high, 
bearing a half bushel of natural-gas flame 
which burns and tosses night and day, winter 
and summer, making the Bottom a warm cor- 
ner of the earth, when the unassisted temper- 
ature is in the eighties. It is a bewildering 
scene, with all these derricks thickly scattered 
around, engines noisily purring, walking-beams 
forever rearing and plunging, the country cob- 
webbed with tumbling-rods and pipe lines, the 
shanties of the operatives with their rude lamp- 
posts, and the face of Nature so besmeared 
with the crude output of the wells that every 
twig and leaf is thick with grease. 

Just above Witten's commences the Long 
Reach of the Ohio — a charming panorama, for 
sixteen and a half miles in a nearly straight 
line to the southwest. Little towns line the 
alternating bottoms, and farmsteads are nu- 



80 On the Storied Ohio 

merous on the slopes. But they are rocky 
and narrow, these gentle shoulders of the hills, 
and a poor class of folk occupy them — half 
fishers, half farmers, a cross between my 
Round Bottom friend and the houseboat no- 
mads. 

A picturesquely-dilapidated log house, with 
whitewashed porch in front, and a vine arbor 
at the rear, attracted our attention at the foot 
of the reach, near Grape Island. I clambered 
up, to photograph it. The ice was broken by 
asking for a drink of water. A gaunt girl of 
eighteen, the elder of two, with bare feet, her 
snaky hair streaming unkempt about a smirk- 
ing face, went with a broken-nosed pitcher to 
a run, which could be heard splashing over its 
rocky bed near by. The meanwhile, I took a 
seat in the customary arcade between the 
living room and kitchen, and talked with her 
fat, greasy, red-nosed father, who confided to 
me that he was "a pi'neer from way back." 
He occupied his own land — a rare circum- 
stance among these riverside "crackers;" had 
a hundred and thirty acres, worth twenty dol- 
lars the acre; "jist yon ways," back of the 
house, in the cliff-side, there was a coal vein 
two feet thick, as yet only "worked" for his 



Photographing Crackers 81 

own fuel; and lately, he had struck a bank of 
firebrick clay which might some day be a 
"good thing for th' gals." 

On leaving, I casually mentioned my desire 
to photograph the family on the porch, where 
the light was good. While I walked around 
the house outside, they passed through the 
front room, which seemed to be the common 
dormitory as well as parlor. To my surprise 
and chagrin, the girls and their dowdy mother 
had, in those brief moments of transition, con- 
trived to arrange their hair and dress to a de- 
gree which took from them all those picturesque 
qualities with which they had been invested at 
the time of my arrival. The father was being 
reproved, as he emerged upon the porch, for 
not "slick'n' his ha'r, and wash'n' and fix'n' 
up, afore hav'n' his pictur' taken;" but the old 
fellow was obdurate, and joined me in remon- 
strance against this transformation to the com^ 
monplace, on the part of his women-folk. 
However, there was no profit in arguing with 
them, and I took my snap-shot with a con- 
viction that the film was being wasted. 

We were in several small towns to-day, in 
pursuance of the policy of distributing our 
shopping, so as to see as much of the shore 
6 



82 On the Storied Ohio 

life as practicable. Chief among them have 
been New Matamoras (141 miles) and St. 
Mary's (154 miles), in West Virginia, and 
Newport, in Ohio (155 miles). Rather dingy 
villages, these — each, after their kind, with a 
stone wharf thick-grown with weeds; a flour- 
ing mill at the head of the landing; a few 
cheap-looking, battlemented stores; boys and 
men lounging about with that air of comfort- 
able idling which impresses one as the main 
characteristic of rustic hamlets, where nobody 
seems ever to have anything to do; a ferry 
running to the opposite shore — for cattle and 
wagons, a heavy flat, with railings, made to 
drift with the current; and for foot passengers, 
a lumbering skiff, with oars chucking noisily 
in their roomy locks. 

Every now and then we run across bunches 
of oil and gas wells; and great signs, like those 
advertising boards which greet railway trav- 
elers approaching our large cities, are here and 
there perched upon the banks, notifying steam- 
boat pilots, in letters a foot high, that a pipe 
line here crosses the river, the vicinity being 
consequently unsafe for mooring. 

Our camp, to-night, is on a bit of grassy 
ledge at the summit of a rocky bank, ten miles 



A Camp Bore 83 

above Marietta, on the Ohio side. A rod or 
so back of us is the country road, which winds 
along at the foot of a precipitous steep. It is 
narrow quarters here, and too near the high- 
way for comfort, but nothing better seemed to 
offer at the time we needed it; and the outlook 
is pleasant, through the fringing oaks and elms, 
across the broad river into West Virginia. 

We had not yet pitched tent, and all hands 
were still clambering over the rocks with Pil- 
grim's cargo, rather glad that there was no 
more of it, when our first camp- bore ap- 
peared — a middling-sized man, florid as to 
complexion, with a mustache and goatee, and 
in a suit of seedy black, surmounted by a 
crushed-in Derby hat; and, after the fashion 
of the country, giving evidence, on his collar- 
less white shirt, of a free use of chewing to- 
bacco. I have seldom met a fellow with better 
staying qualities. He was a strawberry grower, 
he said, and having been into Newport, a half 
dozen miles up river, was walking to his home, 
which was a mile or two off in the hills. Would 
we object if, for a few moments, he tarried 
here by the roadside? and perhaps we could 
accommodate him with a drink of water? Pa- 
tiently did he watch the preparation of dinner, 



84 On the Storied Ohio 

and spice each dish with commendations of 
W — 's skill at making the most of her few 
utensils. 

Right glibly he chattered on; now about the 
decadence of womankind; now about straw- 
berry-growing upon these Ohio hills — with the 
crop just coming on, and berries selling at a 
shilling to-day, in Marietta, when they ought 
to be worth twenty cents; now on politics, and 
of course he was a Populist; now on the hard 
times, and did we believe in free silver? He 
would take no bite with us, but sat and talked 
and talked, despite plain hints, growing plainer 
with the progress of time, that his family needed 
him at nightfall. Dinner was eaten, and dishes 
washed; the others left on a botanical round- 
up, and I produced my writing materials, with 
remarks upon the lateness of the hour. At 
last our guest arose, shook the grass from his 
clothes, with a shake of hands bade me good- 
night, wishing me to convey his " good-bye" 
to the rest of our party, and as politely as pos- 
sible expressed the great pleasure which the 
visit had given him. 

Some farmer boys came down the hillside 
to fish at the bank, and talked pleasantly of 
their work and of the ever-changing phases of 



A Street Fakir 85 

the river. Other farmers passed our roadside 
door, in wagons, on buckboards, by horseback, 
and on foot; in neighborly tone, but with ill- 
disguised curiosity in their eyes, wishing me 
good evening. When the long twilight was 
almost gone, and the moon an hour high over 
the purple dusk of the West Virginia hills, the 
botanists returned, aglow with their exercise, 
and rich with trophies of blue and dwarf lark- 
spur, pink and white stone-crop, trailing ar- 
butus, and great laurel. 

And then, as we were preparing to retire, a 
sleek and dapper fellow, though with clothes 
rather the worse for wear, came trudging along 
the road toward Marietta. Seeing our camp, 
he asked for a drink. Being apparently dis- 
posed to tarry, the Doctor, to get him started, 
offered to walk a piece with him. Our com- 
rade staid out so long, that at last I went down 
the road in search of him, and found the pair 
sitting on a moonlit bank, as cozily as if they 
had been always friends. The stranger had 
revealed to the Doctor that he was a street 
fakir, "by perfesh," and had "struck it rich" 
in Chicago during the World's Fair, but some- 
how had lost the greater part of his gains, and 
was now associated with his brother, who had 



86 On the Storied Ohio 

a junk-boat; the brother was "well heeled," 
and staid and kept store at the boat, while 
the fakir, as the walking partner, "rustled 
'round 'mong th' grangers, to stir up trade. " 
The Doctor had, in their talk, let slip some- 
thing about certain Florida experiences, and 
when I arrived on the scene was being skillfully 
questioned by his companion as to the proba- 
bilities of "a feller o' my perfesh ketch'n' on, 
down thar?" The result of this pumping pro- 
cess must have been satisfactory; for when we 
parted with him, the fakir declared he was 
"go'n' try 't on thar, next winter, 'f I bust me 
bottom dollar!" 



/J CHARACTERISTIC view, in the upper reaches. 
^■*- The shafts of oil wells are see?i thickly strewing the 
left bank. Railways follow each shore, but only the one on 
the right is here shown. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Life ashore and afloat — Marietta, "the 
Plymouth Rcck of the West" — The 
Little Kanawha — The story of Blen- 
nerhassett's Island. 

Blennerhassett's Island, Sunday, May 
13th. — The day broke without fog, at our 
camp on the rocky steep above Marietta. The 
eastern sky was veiled with summer clouds, all 
gayly flushed by the rising sun, and in the 
serene silence of the morning there hung the 
scent of dew, and earth, and trees. In the 
east, the distant edges of the West Virginia 
hills were aglow with the mounting light before 
it had yet peeped over into the river trough, 
where a silvery haze lent peculiar charm to 
flood and bank Up river, one of the Three 
Brothers isles, dark and heavily forested, 
seemed in the middle ground to float on air. 
A bewitching picture this, until at last the sun 
sprang clear and strong above the fringing 
hills, and the spell was broken. 
87 



88 On the Storied Ohio 

The steamboat traffic is improving as we 
get lower down. Last evening, between land- 
ing and bedtime, a half dozen passed us, up 
and down, breathing heavily as dragons might, 
and leaving behind them foamy wakes which 
loudly broke upon the shore. Before morn- 
ing, I was at intervals awakened by as many 
more. A striking spectacle, the passage of a 
big river steamer in the night; you hear, fast 
approaching, a labored pant; suddenly, around 
the bend, or emerging from behind an island, 
the long white monster glides into view, 
lanterns gleaming on two lines of deck, her 
electric searchlight uneasily flitting to and 
fro, first on one landmark, then on another, 
her engine bell sharply clanging, the measured 
pant developing into a burly, all-pervading 
roar, which gradually declines into a pant 
again — and then she disappears as she came, 
her swelling wake rudely ruffling the moonlit 
stream. 

We caught up with a large lumber raft this 
morning, descending from Pittsburg to Cin- 
cinnati. The half-dozen men in charge were 
housed midway in a rude little shanty, and 
relieved each other at the sweeps — two at 
bow, and two astern. It is an easy, lounging 



Transplanted Yankees 89 

life, most of the way, with some difficulties in 
the shallows, and in passing beneath the great 
bridges. They travel night and day, except 
in the not infrequent wind-storms blowing up 
stream; and it will take them another week to 
cover the three hundred miles between this 
and their destination. Far different fellows, 
these commonplace raftsmen of to-day, from 
the "lumber boys" of a half-century or more 
ago, when the river towns were regularly 
"painted red" by the men who followed the 
Ohio by raft or flatboat. Life along shore 
was then more picturesque than comfortable. 

Later, we stopped on the Ohio shore to chat 
with a group of farmers having a Sunday talk, 
their seat a drift log, in the shade of a willowed 
bank. They proved to be market gardeners 
and fruit-growers — well-to-do men of their 
class, and intelligent in conversation; all of 
them descendants of the sturdy New Engend- 
ers who settled these parts. 

While the others were discussing small Traits 
with these transplanted Yankees, who proved 
quite as full of curiosity about us as we con- 
cerning them, I went down shore a hundred 
yards, struggling through the dense fringe of 
willows, to photograph a junk-boat just putting 



90 On the Storied Ohio 

off into the stream. The two rough-bearded, 
merry-eyed fellows at the sweeps were setting 
their craft broadside to the stream — that "the 
current might have more holt of her," the chief 
explained. They were interested in the kodak, 
and readily posed as I wished, but wanted to 
see what had been taken, having the common 
notion that it is like a tintype camera, with 
results at once attainable. They offered our 
party a ride for the rest of the day, if we 
would row alongside and come aboard, but I 
thanked them, saying their craft was too slow 
for our needs; at which they laughed heartily, 
and "lowed" we might be traders, too, anx- 
ious to get in ahead of them — "but there's 
plenty o' room o' th' river, for yew an' we, 
stranger! Well, good luck to yees! We'll see 
yer down below, somewhar, I reckon!" 

Just before lunch, we were at Marietta, at 
the mouth of the Muskingum (171 miles), a 
fine stream, here two hundred and fifty yards 
wide. A storied river, this Muskingum. We 
first definitely hear of it in 1748, the year the 
original Ohio Company was formed. Celoron 
was here the year following, with his little 
band of French soldiers and Indians, vainly 
endeavoring to turn English traders out of the 



Planting of Marietta 91 

Ohio Valley. Christopher Gist came, some 
months later; then the trader Croghan, for 
" Old Wyandot Town," the Indian village on 
this river, was a noted centre in Western forest 
traffic. Moravian missionaries appeared in due 
time, establishing on the banks of the Mus- 
kingum the ill-fated convert villages of Schon- 
brunn, Gnadenhutten, and Salem. In 1785, 
Fort Harmar was reared on the site of Wyan- 
dot Town. Lastly, in the early spring of 1788, 
came, in Ohio river flatboats, that famous body 
of New England veterans of the Revolution, 
under Gen. Rufus Putnam, and planted Mari- 
etta— " the Plymouth Rock of the West." 

We smile at these Ohio pilgrims, for digni- 
fying the hills which girt in the Marietta bot- 
tom, with the names of the seven on which 
Rome is said to be built — for having a Campus 
Martius and a Sacra Via, and all that, out 
here among the sycamore stumps and the wild 
Indians. But a classical revival was just then 
vigorously affecting American thought, and it 
would have been strange if these sturdy New 
Englanders had not felt its influence, fresh 
as they were from out the shadows of Harvard 
and Yale, and in the awesome presence of 
crowds of huge monumental earthworks, whose 



92 On the Storied Ohio 

age, in their day, was believed to far outdate 
the foundations of the Eternal City itself. 
They loved learning for learning's sake; and 
here, in the log-cabins of Marietta, eight hun- 
dred miles west of their beloved Boston, among 
many another good thing they did for poster- 
ity, they established the principle of public 
education at public cost, as a national prin- 
ciple. 

They were soldier colonists. Washington, 
out of a full heart, for he dearly loved the 
West, said of them: "No colony in America 
was ever settled under such favorable auspices 
as that which has just commenced at the Mus- 
kingum. Information, property, and strength 
will be its characteristics. I know many of 
the settlers personally, and there never were 
men better calculated to promote the welfare 
of such a community." And when, in 1825, 
La Fayette had read to him the list of Marietta 
pioneers, — nearly fifty military officers among 
them, — he cried: "I know them all! I saw 
them at Brandywine, Yorktown, and Rhode 
Island. . They were the bravest of the brave!" 

Yet, for a long time, Marietta met with 
small measure of success. Miasma, Indian 
ravages, and the conservative temperament of 



A New England Town 93 

the people combined to render slow the 
growth of this Western Plymouth. There 
were, for a time, extensive ship-building yards 
here; but that industry gradually declined, 
with the growth of railway systems. In our 
day, Marietta, with its ten thousand inhab- 
itants, prospers chiefly as a market town and 
an educational center, with some manufactur- 
ing interests. We were struck to-day, as we 
tarried there for an hour or two, with the re- 
markable resemblance it has in public and 
private architecture, and in general tone, to a 
typical New England town — say, for example, 
Burlington, Vt. Omitting its river front, and 
its Mound Cemetery, Marietta might be set 
bodily down almost anywhere in Massachu- 
setts, or Vermont, or Connecticut, and the 
chance traveler would see little in the place 
to remind him of the West. I know of no 
other town out of New England of which the 
same might be said. 

Below Marietta, the river bottoms are, for 
miles together, edged with broad stretches of 
sloping beach, either deep with sand or natu- 
rally paved with pebbles — sometimes treeless, 
but often strewn with clumps of willow and 
maple and scrub sycamore. The hills, now 



94 On the Storied Ohio 

rounder, less ambitious, and more widely sep- 
arated, are checkered with fields and forests, 
and the bottom lands are of more generous 
breadth. Pleasant islands stud the peaceful 
stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time 
attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse 
chestnut, the pawpaw, the grape, and the 
willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene 
is this through which we glide. 

It is evident that it would be a scalding day 
but for the gentle breeze astern; setting sail, 
we gladly drop our oars, and, with the water 
rippling at our prow, sweep blithely down the 
long southern reach to Parkersburg, W. Va. , 
at the mouth of the Little Kanawha (183 miles). 
In the full glare of the scorching sun, Parkers- 
burg looks harsh and dry. But it is well built, 
and, as seen from the river, apparently pros- 
perous. The Ohio is here crossed by the once 
famous million-dollar bridge of the Baltimore 
& Ohio railway. The wharf is at the junction 
of the two streams, but chiefly on the shore of 
the unattractive Little Kanawha, which is 
spanned by several bridges, and abounds in 
steamers and houseboats moored to the land. 
Clark and Jones did not think well of Little 
Kanawha lands, yet there were several families 



Blennerhassett's Island 95 

on the river as early as 1763, and Trent, 
Croghan, and other Fort Pitt fur-traders had 
posts here. There were only half-a-dozen 
houses in 1 800, and Parkersburg itself was not 
laid out until ten years later. 

Blennerhassett's Island lies two miles be- 
low — a broad, dark mass of forest, at the head 
joined by a dam to the West Virginia shore, 
from which it is separated by a slender chan- 
nel. Blennerhassett's is some three and a half 
miles long; of its five hundred acres, four hun- 
dred are under cultivation in three separate 
tenant farms. We landed at the upper end, 
where Blennerhassett had his wharf, facing the 
Ohio shore, and found that we were tres- 
passing upon "The Blennerhassett Pleasure 
Grounds. " A seedy-looking man, who repre- 
sented himself to be the proprietor, promptly 
accosted us and levied a "landing fee" of ten 
cents per head, which included the right to 
remain over night. A little questioning de- 
veloped the fact that thirty acres at the head 
of the island belong to this man, who rents 
the ground to a market gardener, — together 
with the comfortable farmhouse which occu- 
pies the site of Blennerhassett's mansion, — but 
reserves to himself the privilege of levying toll 



96 On the Storied Ohio 

on visitors. He declared to me that fifteen 
thousand people came to the island each sum- 
mer, generally in large railway and steamboat 
excursions, which gives him an easily-acquired 
income sufficient for his needs. It is a pity 
that so famous a place is not a public park. 

The touching story of the Blennerhassetts 
is one of the best known in Western annals. 
Rich in culture and worldly possessions, but 
wildly impracticable, Harman Blennerhassett 
and his beautiful wife came to America in 
1798. Buying this lovely island in the Ohio, 
six hundred miles west of tidewater, they built 
a large mansion, which they furnished lux- 
uriously, adorning it with fine pictures and 
statuary. Here, in the midst of beautiful 
grounds, while Blennerhassett studied astron- 
omy, chemistry, and galvanism, his brilliant 
spouse dispensed rare hospitality to their many 
distinguished guests; for, in those days, it was 
part of a rich young man's education to take a 
journey down the Ohio, into "the Western 
parts, " and on returning home to write a book 
about it. 

But there came a serpent to this Eden. 
Aaron Burr was among their visitors (1805), 
while upon his journey to New Orleans, where 



Burr's Treason 97 

he hoped to set on foot a scheme to seize 
either Texas or Mexico, and set up a republic 
with himself at the head. He interested the 
susceptible Blennerhassetts in his plans, the 
import of which they probably little under- 
stood; but the fantastic Englishman had suf- 
fered a considerable reduction of fortune, and 
was anxious to recoup, and Burr's representa- 
tions were aglow with the promise of such 
rewards in the golden southwest as Cortes and 
Coronado sought. Blennerhassett's purse was 
opened to the enterprise of Burr; large sums 
were spent in boats and munitions, which were, 
tradition says, for a time hid in the bayou 
which, close by our camp, runs deep into the 
island forest. It has been filled in by the 
present proprietor, but its bold shore lines, all 
hung with giant sycamores, are still in evi- 
dence. 

President Jefferson's proclamation (October, 
1806) shattered the plot, and Blennerhassett 
fled to join Burr at the mouth of the Cumber- 
land. Both were finally arrested (1807), and 
tried for treason, but acquitted on technical 
grounds. In the meantime, people from the 
neighboring country sacked Blennerhassett's 
house; then came creditors, and with great 
7 



98 On the Storied Ohio 

waste seized his property; the beautiful place 
was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians, 
and turned into ignoble uses; later, the man- 
sion itself was burned through the carelessness 
of negroes — and now, all they can show us are 
the old well and the noble trees which once 
graced the lawn. As for the Blennerhassetts 
themselves, they wandered far and wide, every- 
where the victims of misfortune. He died on 
the Island of Guernsey (1831), a disappointed 
office-seeker; she, returning to America to seek 
redress from Congress for the spoliation of her 
home, passed away in New York, before the 
claim was allowed, and was buried by the Sis- 
ters of Charity. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Poor whites — First library in the West — 
An hour at Hockingport — A hermit 

FISHER. 

Long Bottom, Monday, May 14th. — Push- 
ing up stream for two miles this morning, the 
commissary department replenished the day's 
stores at Parkersburg. Forepaugh's circus 
was in town, and crowds of rustics were com- 
ing in by wagon road, railway trains, and 
steamers and ferries on both rivers. The 
streets of the quaint, dingy Southern town 
were teeming with humanity, mainly negroes 
and poor whites. Among the latter, flat, 
pallid faces, either flabby or too lean, were 
under the swarms of blue, white, and yellow 
sunbonnets — sad faces, with lack-luster eyes, 
coarse hair of undecided hue, and coarser 
speech. These Audreys of Dixie-land are the 
product of centuries of ill-treatment on our 
soil; indented white servants to the early coast 
colonists were in the main their ancestors; 
99 

L.ofC. 



ioo On the Storied Ohio 

with slave competition, the white laborer in the 
South lost caste until even the negro despised 
him; and ill-nurture has done the rest. Then, 
too, in these bottoms, malaria has wrought its 
work, especially among the underfed; you see 
it in the yellow skin and nerveless tone of 
these lanky rustics, who are in town to enjoy 
the one bright holiday of their weary year. 

Across the river, in Ohio, is Belpre (short 
for Belle Prairie, and now locally pronounced 
Bel'pry), settled by Revolutionary soldiers, on 
the Marietta grant, in 1789-90. I always 
think well of Belpre, because here was estab- 
lished the first circulating library in the 
Northwest. Old Israel Putnam, he of the 
wolf-den and Bunker Hill, amassed many 
books. His son Israel, on moving to Belpre 
in 1796, carried a considerable part of the 
collection with him — no small undertaking 
this, at a time when goods had to be carted 
all the way from Connecticut, over rivers and 
mountains to the Ohio, and then floated 
down river by flatboat, with a high tariff for 
every pound of freight. Young Israel was 
public-spirited, and, having been at so great 
cost and trouble to get this library out to the 
wilderness, desired his fellow-colonists to en- 



A Pioneer Library 101 

joy it with him. It would have been unfair 
not to distribute the expense, so a stock com- 
pany was formed, and shares were sold at ten 
dollars each. Of the blessings wrought in 
this rude frontier community by the books 
which the elder Israel had collected for his 
Connecticut fireside, there can be no m®re 
eloquent testimony than that borne by an old 
settler, who, in 1802, writes to an Eastern 
friend: "In order to make the long winter 
evenings pass more smoothly, by great exer- 
tion I purchased a share in the Belpre library, 
six miles distant. Many a night have I passed 
(using pine knots instead of candles) reading 
to my wife while she sat hatcheling, carding 
or spinning." The association was dissolved 
in 181 5 or 1 8 16, and the books distributed 
among the shareholders; many of these vol- 
umes are still extant in this vicinity, and sev- 
eral are in the college museum at Marietta. 

There are few descendants hereabout of the 
original New England settlers, and they live 
miles apart on the Ohio shore. We went up 
to visit one, living opposite Blennerhassett's 
Island. Notice of our coming had preceded 
us, and we were warmly welcomed at a sub- 
stantial farmhouse in the outskirts of Belpre, 



102" On the Storied Ohio 

with every evidence about of abundant pros- 
perity. The maternal great-grandfather of 
our host for an hour was Rufus Putnam, an 
ancestor to be proud of. Five acres of goose- 
berries are grown on the place, and other 
small-fruits in proportion — all for the Par- 
kersburg market, whence much is shipped 
north to Cleveland. Our host confessed to a 
little malaria, even on this upper terrace — or 
4 'second bottom," as they style it — but ''the 
land is good, though with many stones — nat- 
ural conditions, you know, for New Eng- 
landers. " It was pleasant for a New England 
man, not long removed from his native soil, 
to find these people, who are a century away 
from home, still claiming kinship. 

At the Big Hockhocking River (197 miles), 
on a high, semicircular bottom, is Hocking- 
port, a hamlet with a population of three 
hundred. Here, on a still higher bench, a 
quarter of a mile back from the river, Lord 
Dunmore built Fort Gower, one of a chain of 
posts along his march against the Northwest 
Indians (1774). It was from here that he 
marched to the Pickaway Plains, on the Scioto 
(near Circleville, O.), and concluded that 
treaty of peace to which Chief Logan refused 



Peaceful Hockingport 103 

his consent. There are some remains yet left 
of this palisaded earthwork of a century and 
a quarter ago, but the greater part has been 
obliterated by plowing, and a dwelling occu- 
pies a portion of the site. 

It had been very warm, and we had needed 
an awning as far down as Hockingport, where 
we cooled off by lying on the grass in the 
shade of the village blacksmith's shop, which 
is, as well, the ferry-house, with the bell hung 
between two tall posts at the top of the bank, 
its rope dangling down for public use. The 
smith-ferryman came out with his wife — a 
burly, good-natured couple — and joined us in 
our lounging, for it is not every day that 
river travelers put in at this dreamy, far- 
away port. The wife had camped with her 
husband, when he was boss of a railway con- 
struction gang, and both of them frankly en- 
vied us our trip. So did a neighboring store- 
keeper, a tall, lean, grave young man, clean- 
shaven, coatless and vestless, with a blue- 
glass stud on his collarless white shirt. Ap- 
parently there was no danger of customers 
walking away with his goods, for he left his 
store-door open to all comers, not once glanc- 
ing thitherward, in the half-hour he sat with 



104 On the Storied Ohio 

us on a stick of timber, in which he pensively 
carved his name. 

Life goes easily in Hockingport. Years 
ago there was some business up the Big 
Hocking (short for Big Hockhocking), a stream 
of a half-dozen rods' width, but now no steamer 
ventures up — the railroads do it all; as for the 
Ohio — well, the steamers now and then put 
off a box or bale for the four shop-keepers, 
and once in a while a passenger patronizes 
the landing. There is still a little country 
traffic, and formerly a sawmill was in opera- 
tion here; you see its ruins down there below. 
Hockingport is a type of several rustic ham- 
lets we have seen to-day; they are often in 
pairs, one either side of the river, for compan- 
ionship's sake. 

We are idling, despite the knowledge that on 
turning every big bend we are getting farther 
and farther south, and mid-June on the Lower 
Ohio is apt to be sub-tropical. But the sink- 
ing sun gives us a shadowy right bank, and 
that is most welcome. The current is only 
spasmodically good. Every night the river 
falls from three to six inches, and there are 
long stretches of slack-water. The steamers 
pick their way carefully; we do not give them 



Taking a Wake 105 

as wide a berth as formerly, for the wakes 
they turn are no longer savage — but wakes, 
even when sent out by stern-wheelers at full 
speed, now give us little trouble; it did not 
take long to learn the knack of "taking" 
them. Whether you meet them at right an- 
gles, or in the trough, there is the same deli- 
cious sensation of rising and falling on the 
long swells — there is no danger, so long as 
you are outside the line of foaming breakers; 
within those, you may ship water, which is 
not desirable when there is a cargo. But the 
boys at the towns sometimes put out in their 
rude punts into the very vortex of disturb- 
ance, being dashed about in the white roar 
at the base of the ponderous paddle wheels, 
like a Fiji Islander in his surf-boat. We heard, 
the other day, of a boatload of daring young- 
sters being caught by the wheel, their craft 
smashed into kindling-wood, and they them- 
selves all drowned but one. 

The hills, to-day, sometimes break sharply 
off, leaving an eroded, often vine-festooned pal- 
isade some fifty feet in height, at the base of 
which is a long, tree-clad slope of debris; 
then, a narrow, level terrace from fifty to a 
hundred yards in width, which drops suddenly 



106 On the Storied Ohio 

to a rocky beach; this in turn is often lined 
along the water's edge with irregularly-shaped 
boulders, from the size of Pilgrim to fifteen 
or twenty feet in height, and worn smooth 
with the grinding action of the river. The 
effect is highly picturesque. We shall have 
much of this below. 

At the foot of one of these palisades lay a 
shanty-boat, with nets sprawled over the roof 
to dry, and a live-box anchored hard by. 
1 'Hello, the boat!" brought to the window 
the head of the lone fisherman, who dreamily 
peered at us as we announced our wish to be- 
come his customers. A sort of poor-white 
Neptune, this tall, lean, lantern-jawed old 
fellow, with great round, iron-rimmed spec- 
tacles over his fishy eyes, his hair and beard 
in long, snaky locks, and clothing in dirty tat- 
ters. As he put out in his skiff to reach the 
live-box, he continuously spewed tobacco juice 
about him, and in an undertone growled gar- 
rulously, as though used to soliloquize in his 
hermitage, where he lay at outs with the 
world. He had been in this spot for two 
years, he said, and sold fish to the daily Par- 
kersburg steamer — when there were any fish. 
But, for six months past, he " hadn't made 



A Hermit Fisherman 107 

enough to keep him in grub," and had now 
and then to go up to the city and earn some- 
thing. For forty years had he followed the 
apostles' calling on ' ' this yere Ohio, " and the 
fishing was never so poor as now — yes, sir! 
hard times had struck his business, just like 
other folks'. He thought the oil wells were 
tainting the water, and the fish wouldn't 
breed — and the iron slag, too, was spoiling 
the river, and he knew it. He finally pro- 
duced for us, out of his box, a three-pound 
fish, — white perch, calico bass, and catfish 
formed his stock in trade, — but, before hand- 
ing it over, demanded the requisite fifteen 
cents. Evidently he had had dealings with a 
dishonest world, this hermit fisher, and had 
learned a thing or two. 

Perfect camping places are not to be found 
every day. There are so many things to 
think of — a good landing place; good height 
above the water level, in case of a sudden 
rise; a dry, shady, level spot for the tent; 
plenty of wood, and, if possible, a spring; and 
not too close proximity to a house. Occa- 
sionally we meet with what we want, when 
we want it; but quite as often, ideal camping 
places, perhaps abundant half the day, are not 



108 On the Storied Ohio 

to be found at five o'clock, our usual hour for 
homeseeking. The Doctor is our agent for 
this task, for, being bow oar, he can clamber 
out most easily. This evening, he ranged both 
shores for a considerable distance, with ill 
success, so that we are settled on a narrow 
Ohio sand-beach, in the midst of a sparse 
willow copse, only two feet above the river. 
Dinner was had at the very water's edge. 
After a time, a wind-storm arose and flapped 
the tent right vigorously, causing us to pin 
down tightly and weight the sod-cloth; while, 
amid distant thundering, every preparation 
was made for a speedy embarkation in the 
event of flood. The bellow of the frogs all 
about us, the scream of toads, and the heavy 
swash of passing steamers dangerously near 
our door, will be a sufficient lullaby to-night. 



CHAPTER X. 

Cliff-dwellers on Long Bottom — Pom- 
eroy Bend — Letart's Island and Rap- 
ids — Game in the early day — Rainy 
weather — in a " cracker " home. 

Letart's Island, Tuesday, May 15th. — 
After we had gone to bed last night, — we in 
the tent, the Doctor and Pilgrim under the fly, 
which serves as a porch roof, — the heavenly 
floodgates lifted; the rain, coming in sheets, 
beat a fierce tattoo on the tightly-stretched 
canvas, and visions of a sudden rise in the 
fickle river were uppermost in our dreams. 
Everything about us was sopping at daybreak; 
but the sun rose clear and warm from a bed 
of eastern clouds, and the midnight gale had 
softened to a gentle breeze. 

Palisades were frequent to-day. We stopped 
just below camp, at an especially picturesque 
Ohio hamlet, — Long Bottom (207 miles), — 
where the dozen or so cottages are built close 
against the bald rock. Clambering over great 
water-worn boulders, at the river's brink, the 
109 



no On the Storied Ohio 

Doctor and I made our way up through a 
dense tangle of willows and poison ivy and 
grape-vines, emerging upon the country road 
which passes at the foot of this row of modern 
cliff-dwellings. For the most part, little gar- 
dens, with neat palings, run down from the 
cottages to the road. One sprawling log house, 
fairly embowered in vines, and overtopped by 
the palisade rising sheer for thirty feet above 
its back door, looked in this setting for all the 
world like an Alpine chalet, lacking only stones 
on the roof to complete the picture. I took a 
kodak shot at this, also at a group of tousle- 
headed children in the door of a decrepit shanty 
built entirely within a crevice of the rock — 
their Hibernian mother, with one hand holding 
an apron over her head, and the other shield- 
ing her eyes, shrilly crying to a neighboring 
cliff-dweller: "Miss McCarthy! Miss Mc- 
Carthy! There's a feller here, a photergraph'n' 
all the people in the Bottom! Come, quick!" 
Then they eagerly pressed around me, Ger- 
mans and Irish, big and little, women and 
children mostly, asking for a view of the 
picture, which I gave all in turn by letting 
them peep into the ground-glass "finder" — a 
pretty picture, they said it was, with the colors 



The Pomeroy Bend 1 1 1 

all in, and "wonderfully like," though a wee 
bit small. 

Speaking of color, we are daily struck with 
the brilliant hues in the workaday dresses of 
women and children seen along the river. Red 
calico predominates, but blues and yellows, 
and even greens, are seen, brightly splashing 
the somber landscape. 

After Long Bottom, we enter upon the 
south-sweeping Pomeroy Bend of the Ohio, 
commencing at Murraysville (208 miles) and 
ending at Pomeroy (247 miles). It is of itself 
a series of smaller bends, and, as we twist 
about upon our course, the wind strikes us 
successively on all quarters; sometimes giving 
the Doctor a chance to try his sail, which he 
raises on the slightest provocation, — but at 
all times agreeably ruffling the surface that 
would otherwise reflect the glowing sun like a 
mirror. 

The sloping margins of the rich bottoms are 
now often cultivated almost to the very edge 
of the stream, with a line of willow trees left 
as a protecting fringe. Farmers doing this 
take a gambling risk of a summer rise. Where 
the margins have been left untouched by the 
plow, there is a dense mass of vegetation— 



H2 On the Storied Ohio 

sycamores, big of girth and towering to a hun- 
dred feet or more, abound on every hand; the 
willows are phenomenally-rapid growers; and 
in all available space is the rank, thick-stand- 
ing growth of an annual locally styled "horse- 
weed," which rears a cane-like stalk full 
eighteen or twenty feet high — it has now at- 
tained but four or five feet, but the dry stalks 
of last year's growth are everywhere about, 
showing what a formidable barrier to landing 
these giant weeds must be in midsummer. 

We chose for a camping place Letart's 
Island (232 miles), on the West Virginia side, 
not far below Milwood. From the head, where 
our tent is pitched on a sandy knoll thick- 
grown to willows, a long gravel spit runs far 
over toward the Ohio shore. The West Vir- 
ginia channel is narrow, slow and shallow; 
that between us and Ohio has been lessened 
by the island to half its usual width, and the 
current sweeps by at a six-mile gait, in which 
the Doctor and I found it difficult to keep our 
footing while having our customary evening 
dip. Our island is two long, forested humps 
of sand, connected by a stretch of gravel beach, 
giving every evidence of being submerged in 
times of flood; everywhere are chaotic heaps 



Letart's Falls 1 1 3 

of driftwood, many cords in extent; derelict 
trees are lodged in the tops of the highest wil- 
lows and maples — ghostly giants sprawling in 
the moonlight; there is an abandon of vege- 
table debris, layer after layer laid down in sandy 
coverlids. Wild grasses, which flourish on all 
these flooded lands, here attain enormous size. 
Dispensing with our cots for the nonce, we 
have spread our blankets over heaps of dried 
grass pulled from the monster tufts of last 
year's growth. The Ohio is capable of raising 
giant floods; it is still falling with us, but there 
are signs at hand, beyond the slight sprinkle 
which cooled the air for us at bedtime, of 
rainy weather after the long drouth. When 
the feeders in the Alleghanies begin to swell, 
we shall perch high o' nights. 

Near Cheshire, O., Wednesday, May 
1 6th. — The fine current at the island gave us 
a noble start this morning. The river soon 
widens, but Letart's Falls, a mile or two be- 
low, continue the movement, and we went 
fairly spinning on our way. These so-called 
falls, rapids rather, long possessed the imag- 
ination of early travelers. Some of the chron- 
iclers have, while describing them, indulged in 

8 



1 14 On the Storied Ohio 

flights of fancy.* They are of slight conse- 
quence, however, even at this low stage of 
water, save to the careless canoeist who has 
had no experience in rapid water, well-strewn 
with sunken boulders. The scenery of the 
locality is wild, and somewhat impressive. 
The Ohio bank is steep and rugged, abounding 
in narrow little terraces of red clay, deeply 
gullied, and dotted with rough, mean shanties. 
It all had a forbidding aspect, when viewed in 
the blinding sun; but before we had passed, an 
intervening cloud cast a deep shadow over the 
scene, and, softening the effect, made the 
picture more pleasing. 

Croghan was at Letart (1765), on one of 
his land-viewing trips for the Ohio Company, 
and tells us that he saw a "vast migrating 
herd " of buffalo cross the river here. In the 
beginning of colonization in this valley, buffalo 
and elk were to be seen in herds of astonishing 
size; traces of their well-beaten paths through 
the hills, and toward the salt licks of Kentucky 

* Notably, Ashe's Travels; but Palmer, while Saying that 
" they are the only obstruction to the navigation of the Ohio, 
except the rapids at Louisville," declares them to be of slight 
difficulty, and, referring to Ashe's account, says, ' ' Like great 
part of his book, it is all romance." 



Herds of Buffalo 1 1 5 

and Illinois, were observable until within re- 
cent years. Gordon, an early traveler down 
the Ohio (1766), speaks of " great herds of 
buffalo, we observed on the beaches of the 
river and islands into which they come for air, 
and coolness in the heat of the day;" he com- 
menced his raids on them a hundred miles 
below Pittsburg. Hutchins (1778) says, "the 
whole country abounds in Bears, Elks, Buf- 
faloe, Deer, Turkies, &c."* Bears, panthers, 
wolves, eagles, and wild turkeys were indeed 
very plenty at first, but soon became extinct. 
The theory is advanced by Dr. Doddridge, in 
his Notes on Virginia, that hunters' dogs in- 
troduced hydrophobia among the wolves, and 
this ridded the country of them sooner than 
they would naturally have gone; but they were 
still so numerous in 1817, that the traveler 
Palmer heard them nightly, * ' barking on both 
banks." 

Venomous serpents were also numerous in 
pioneer days, and stayed longer. The story is 
told of a tumulus up toward Moundsville, that 

*Tbe last buffalo on record, in the Upper Ohio region, 
■was killed in the Great Kanawha Valley, a dozen miles from 
Charleston, W. Va., in 1815. Five years later, in the same 
vicinity, was killed probably the last elk seen east of the Ohio. 



1 1 6 On the Storied Ohio 

abounded in snakes, particularly rattlers. The 
settlers thought to dig them out, but they came 
to such a mass of human bones that that plan 
was abandoned. Then they instituted a block- 
ade by erecting a tight-board fence around 
the mound, and, thus entrapping the reptiles, 
extirpated the colony in a few days. 

Paroquets were once abundant west of the 
Alleghanies, up to the southern shore of the 
Great Lakes, and great flocks haunted the 
salt springs; but to-day they may be found 
only in the middle Southern states. There 
were, in a state of nature, no crows, black- 
birds, or song-birds in this valley; they fol- 
lowed in the wake of the colonist. The honey 
bee came with the white man, — or rather, just 
preceded him. Rats followed the first settlers, 
then opossums, and fox squirrels still later. 
It is thought, too, that the sand-hill and whoop- 
ing cranes, and the great blue herons which 
we daily see in their stately flight, are birds of 
these later days, when the neighborhood of 
man has frightened away the enemies which 
once kept them from thriving in the valley. 
Turkey buzzards appear alone to remain of 
the ancient birds; the earliest travelers note 
their presence in great flocks, and to-day there 



Cliff-Dwellers 117 

are few vistas open to us, without from one to 
dozens of them wheeling about in mid-air, 
seeking what they may devour. Public opinion 
in the valley is opposed to the wanton killing 
of these scavengers, so useful in a climate as 
warm as this. 

Three miles below Letart's Rapids, is the 
motley settlement of Antiquity, O. , a long row 
of cabins and cottages nestled at the base of a 
high, vine-clad palisade, similar to that which 
yesterday we visited at Long Bottom. Some 
of these cliff-dwellings are picturesque, some 
exhibit the prosperity of their owners, but 
many are squalid. At the water's edge is that 
which has given its name to the locality, an 
ancient rock, which once bore some curious 
Indian carving. Hall (1820) found only one 
figure remaining, "a man in a sitting posture, 
making a pipe;" to-day, even thus much has 
been largely obliterated by the elements. But 
Antiquity itself is not quite dead. There is a 
ship-yard here; and a sawmill in active opera- 
tion, besides the ruins of two others. 

We also passed Racine (240 miles), another 
Ohio town — a considerable place, no doubt, 
although only the tops of the buildings were, 
from the river level, to be seen above the high 



1 1 8 On the Storied Ohio 

bank; these, and an enticing view up the 
wharf-street. Of more immediate interest, 
just then, were the heavens, now black and 
threatening. Putting in hurriedly to the West 
Virginia shore, we pitched tent on a shelving 
clay beach, shielded by the ever-present wil- 
lows, and in five minutes had everything under 
shelter. With a rumble and bang, and a great 
flurry of wind, the thunder-storm broke upon 
us in full fury. There had been no time to 
run a ditch around the tent, so we spread our 
cargo atop of the cots. The Boy engineered 
riverward the streams of water which flowed 
in beneath the canvas; W — , ever practical, 
caught rain from the dripping fly, and did the 
family washing, while the Doctor and I pre- 
pared a rather pasty lunch. 

An hour later, we bailed out Pilgrim, and 
once more ventured upon our way. It is a 
busy district between Racine and Sheffield 
(251 miles). For eleven miles, upon the Ohio 
bank, there are few breaks between the 
towns, — Racine, Syracuse, Minersville, Pom- 
eroy, Coalport, Middleport, and Sheffield. 
Coal mines and salt works abound, with other 
industries interspersed; and the neighborhood 
appears highly prosperous. Its metropolis is 



A Connecticut Ancestry 119 

Pomeroy, in shape a "shoe-string" town, — 
much of it not over two blocks wide, and 
stretching along for two miles, at the foot of 
high palisades. West Virginia is not far be- 
hind, in enterprise, with the salt-work towns 
of New Haven, Hartford, and Mason City, — 
bespeaking, in their names, a Connecticut 
ancestry. 

The afternoon sun gushed out, and the face 
of Nature was cleanly beautiful, as, leaving 
the convolutions of the Pomeroy Bend, we 
entered upon that long river-sweep to the 
south-by-southwest, which extends from Pom- 
eroy to the Big Sandy, a distance of sixty- 
eight miles. A mile or two below Cheshire, 
O. (256 miles), we put in for the night on the 
West Virginia shore. There is a natural pier 
of rocky ledge, above that a sloping beach of 
jagged stone, and then the little grassy terrace 
which we have made our home. 

Searching for milk and eggs, I walked along 
a railway track and then up through a corn- 
field, to a little log farm-house, whose broad 
porch was shingled with "shakes" and shaded 
by a lusty grape-vine. Fences, house, and out- 
buildings had been newly whitewashed, and 
there was all about an uncommon air of neat- 



120 On the Storied Ohio 

ness. A stout little girl of eleven or twelve, 
met me at the narrow gate opening through 
the garden palings. It may be because a gyp- 
sying trip like this roughens one in many 
ways, — for man, with long living near to Na- 
ture's heart, becomes of the earth, earthy, — 
that she at first regarded me with suspicious 
eyes, and, with one hand resting gracefully on 
her hip, parleyed over the gate, as to what 
price I was paying in cash, for eggs and milk, 
and where I hailed from. 

With her wealth of blond hair done up in a 
saucy knot behind; her round, honest face; 
her lips thick, and parted over pearly teeth; 
her nose saucily retrousse; and her flashing, 
outspoken blue eyes, this barefooted child of 
Nature had a certain air of authority, a con- 
sciousness of power, which made her womanly 
beyond her years. She must have seen that I 
admired her, this little "cracker" queen, in 
her clean but tattered calico frock; for her 
mood soon melted, and with much grace she 
ushered me within the house. Calling Sam, 
an eight -year-old, to ' ' keep the gen'lem'n com- 
p'ny," she prettily excused herself, and scamp- 
ered off up the hillside in search of the cows. 

A barefooted, loose-jointed, gaunt, sandy- 



An Ambitious Boy 121 

haired, freckled, open-eyed youngster is Sam. 
He came lounging into the room, and, taking 
my hat, hung it on a peg above the fireplace; 
then, dropping into a big rocking-chair, with 
his muddy legs hanging over an arm, at once, 
with a curious, old-fashioned air, began ' ' keep- 
ing company" by telling me of the new litter 
of pigs, with as little diffidence as though I 
were an old neighbor who had dropped in on 
the way to the cross-roads. "And thet thar 
new Shanghai rooster, mister, ain't he a beauty? 
He cost a dollar, he did — a dollar in silver, 
sir!" 

There was no difficulty in drawing Sam 
out. He is frankness itself. What was he 
going to make of himself ? Well, he ' ' 'lowed " 
he wanted to be either a locomotive engineer 
or a steamboat captain — hadn't made up his 
mind which. "But whatever a boy wants 
to be, he will be!" said Sam, with the decided 
tone of a man of the world, who had seen 
things. I asked Sam what the attractions 
were in the life of an engine driver. He 
4 ' 'lowed " they went so fast through the world, 
and saw so many different people; and in 
their lifetime served on different roads, maybe, 
and surely they must meet with some excite- 



122 On the Storied Ohio 

ment. And in that of a steamboat captain ? 
''Oh! now yew're talk'n', mister! A right 
smart business, thet! A boss'n' o' people 
'round, a seein' o' th' world, and noth'n' 't all 
to do! Now, that's right smart, I take it!" 
It was plain where his heart lay. He saw the 
steamers pass the farm daily, and once he 
had watched one unload at Point Pleasant — 
well, that was the life for him! Sam will 
have to be up and doing, if he is to be the 
monarch of a stern-wheeler on the Ohio; but 
many another "cracker" boy has attained 
this exalted station, and Sam is of the sort to 
win his way. 

Soon the kine came lowing into the yard, 
and my piquant young friend who had met 
me at the gate stood in the doorway talking 
with us both, while their brother Charley, an 
awkward, self-conscious lad of ten, took my 
pail and milked into it the required two 
quarts. It is a large, square room, where I 
was so agreeably entertained. The well- 
chinked logs are scrupulously whitewashed; 
the parental bed, with gay pillow shams, 
bought from a peddler, occupies one corner; 
a huge brick fireplace opens black and yawn- 
ing, into the base of a great cobblestone 



A Cracker Queen 123 

chimney reared against the house without, 
after the fashion of the country; on pegs 
about, hang the best clothes of the family; 
while a sewing-machine, a deal table, a cheap 
little mirror as big as my palm, a few un- 
framed chromos, and a gaudy ''Family Rec- 
ord" chart hung in an old looking-glass 
frame, — with appropriate holes for tintypes of 
father, mother, and children, — complete the 
furnishings of the apartment, which is parlor, 
sitting-room, dining-room, and bedroom all in 
one. 

My little queen was evidently proud of her 
throne-room, and noted with satisfaction my 
interest in the Family Record. When I had 
paid her for butter and eggs, at retail rates, 
she threw in an extra egg, and, despite my 
protests, woulci have Charley take the pail out 
to the cow, "for an extra squirt or two, for 
good measure!" 

I was bidding them all good-bye, and the 
queen was pressing me to come again in the 
morning "fer more stuff, ef ye 'lowed yew 
wanted any," when the mother of the little 
brood appeared from over the fields, where 
she had been to carry water to her lord. A 
fair, intelligent, rather fine-looking woman, 



1 24 On the Storied Ohio 

but barefooted like the rest; from her neck 
behind, dangled a red sunbonnet, and a 
sunny-haired child of five was in her arms — 
"sort o' weak in her lungs, poor thing!" she 
sadly said, as I snapped my fingers at the 
smiling tot. I tarried a moment with the 
good mother, as, sitting upon the porch, she 
serenely smiled upon her children, whose eyes 
were now lit with responsive love; and I 
wondered if there were not some romance 
hidden here, whereby a dash of gentler blood 
had through this sweet-tempered woman been 
infused into the coarse clay of the bottom. 



CHAPTER XL 

Battle of Point Pleasant — The story of 
Gallipolis — Rosebud — Huntington — 
The genesis of a house-boater. 

Near Glenwood, W. Va. , Thursday, May 
17th. — By eight o'clock this morning we were 
in Point Pleasant, W. Va., at the mouth of 
the Great Kanawha River (263 miles). Cel- 
oron was here, the eighteenth of August, 1749, 
and on the east bank of the river, the site of 
the present village, buried at the foot of an 
elm one of his leaden plates asserting the claim 
of France to the Ohio basin. Ninety-seven 
years later, a boy unearthed this interesting 
but futile proclamation, and it rests to-day in 
the museum of the Virginia Historical So- 
ciety. 

The Great Kanawha Valley long had a 
romantic interest for Englishmen concerned 
in Western lands. It was in the grant to 
the old Ohio Company; but that corporation, 
handicapped in many ways, was practically 
dead by the time of Lord Dunmore's war. 
125 



126 On the Storied Ohio 

It had many rivals, more or less ephemeral, 
among them the scheme of George Mercer 
( x 773) to have the territory between the Alle- 
ghanies and the Ohio — the West Virginia of 
to-day — erected into the ' ' Province of Van- 
dalia, " with himself as governor, and his cap- 
ital at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. 
Washington owned a ten-thousand-acre tract 
on both sides of the river, commencing a 
short distance above the mouth, which he 
surveyed in person, in October, 1770; and in 
1773 we find him advertising to sell or lease 
it; among the inducements he offered was, 
"the scheme for establishing a new govern- 
ment on the Ohio," and the contiguity of his 
lands "to the seat of government, which, it is 
more than probable, will be fixed at the 
mouth of the Great Kanawha." Had not the 
Revolution broken out, and nipped this and 
many another budding plan for Western col- 
onization, there is little doubt that what we 
call West Virginia would have been estab- 
lished as a state, a century earlier than it 
was.* 

* Washington was much interested in a plan to connect, 
by a canal, the James and Great Kanawha Rivers, separated 
at their sources by a portage of but a few miles in length. 



Dunmore's War 1 27 

A few days ago we were at Mingo Bottom, 
where lived Chief Logan, whose family were 
treacherously slaughtered by border ruffians 
(1774). The Mingos, ablaze with the fire of 
vengeance, carried the war-pipe through the 
neighboring villages; runners were sent in 
every direction to rouse the tribes; tomahawks 
were unearthed, war-posts were planted; mes- 
sages of defiance sent to the Virginians; and 
in a few days Lord Dunmore's war was in full 
swing, from Cumberland Gap to Fort Pitt, 
from the Alleghanies to the Wabash. 

His lordship, then governor of Virginia, was 
full of energy, and proved himself a compe- 
tent military manager. The settlers were or- 
ganized; the rude log forts were garrisoned; 
forays were made against the Indian villages 
as far away as Muskingum, and an army of 

The distance from Point Pleasant to Richmond is 485 miles. 
In 1785, Virginia incorporated the James River Company, 
of which Washington was the first president. The project 
hung fire, because of "party spirit and sectional jealousies," 
until 1832, when a new company was incorporated, under 
which the James was improved (1836-53), but the Kanawha 
was untouched. In 1874, United States engineers presented 
a plan calling for an expenditure of sixty millions, but there 
the matter rests. The Kanawha is navigable by large 
steamers for sixty miles, up to the falls at Charleston, and 
beyond almost to its source, by light craft. 



128 On the Storied Ohio 

nearly three thousand backwoodsmen, armed 
with smooth-bores and clad in fringed buck- 
skin hunting-shirts, was put in the field. 

One division of this army, eleven hundred 
strong, under Gen. Andrew Lewis, descended 
the Great Kanawha River, and on Point Pleas- 
ant met Cornstalk, a famous Shawnee chief, 
who, while at first peaceful, had by the 
Logan tragedy been made a fierce enemy of 
the whites, and was now the leader of a thou- 
sand picked warriors, gathered from all parts 
of the Northwest. On the ioth of October, 
from dawn until dusk, was here waged in a 
gloomy forest one of the most bloody and stub- 
born hand-to-hand battles ever fought between 
Indians and whites — especially notable, too, 
because for the first time the rivals were about 
equal in number. The combatants stood be- 
hind trees, in Indian fashion, and it is hard to 
say who displayed the best generalship, Corn- 
stalk or Lewis.* When the pall of night cov- 

* Hall, in Romance of Western History (1820), says 
that when Washington was tendered command of the Rev- 
olutionary army, he replied that it should rather be given to 
Gen. Andrew Lewis, of whose military abilities he had a 
high opinion. Lewis was a captain in the Little Meadows 
affair (1752), and a companion of Washington in Braddock's 
defeat (1755). 



Point Pleasant 129 

ered the hideous contest, the whites had lost 
one-fifth of their number, while the savages 
had sustained but half as many casualties. 
Cornstalk's followers had had enough, how- 
ever, and withdrew before daylight, leaving 
the field to the Americans. 

A few days later, General Lewis joined 
Lord Dunmore — who headed the other wing 
of the army, which had proceeded by the way 
of Forts Pitt and Gower— on the Pickaway 
plains, in Ohio; and there a treaty was made 
with the Indians, who assented to every prop- 
osition made them. They surrendered all 
claim to lands south of the Ohio River, re- 
turned their white prisoners and stolen horses, 
and gave hostages for future good behavior. 

Here at Point Pleasant, a year later, Fort 
Randolph was built, and garrisoned by a hun- 
dred men; for, despite the treaty, the Indians 
were still troublesome. For a long time, 
Pittsburg, Redstone, and Randolph were the 
only garrisoned forts on the frontier. The 
Point Pleasant of to-day is a dull, sleepy town 
of twenty-five hundred inhabitants, with that 
unkempt air and preponderance of lounging 
negroes, so common to small Southern com- 
munities. The bottom is rolling, fringed with 
9 



130 On the Storied Ohio 

large hills, and on the Ohio side drops suddenly 
for fifty feet to a shelving beach of gravel and 
clay. Crooked Creek, in whose narrow, wind- 
ing valley some of the severest fighting was 
had, empties into the Kanawha a half-mile up 
the stream, at the back of the town. It was 
painful to meet several men of intelligence, 
who had long been engaged in trade here, to 
whom the Battle of Point Pleasant was a 
shadowy event, whose date they could not fix, 
nor whose importance understand; it seemed 
to be little more a part of their lives, than an 
obscure contest between Matabeles and whites, 
in far-off Africa. It is time that our Western 
and Southern folk were awakened to an ap- 
preciation of the fact that they have a history 
at their doors, quite as significant in the annals 
of civilization as that which induces pilgrim- 
ages to Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill. 

Four miles below, Pilgrim was beached for 
a time at Gallipolis, O. (267 miles), which has 
a story all its own. The district belonged, a 
century ago, to the Scioto Company, an off- 
shoot of the Marietta enterprise. Joel Barlow, 
the "poet of the Revolution," was sent to 
Paris (May, 1788) as agent for the sale of 
lands. As the result of his personal popularity 



Settlement of Gallipolis 131 

there, and his flaming immigration circulars 
and maps, he disposed of a hundred thousand 
acres; to settle on which, six hundred French 
emigrants sailed for America, in February, 
1790. They were peculiarly unsuited for col- 
onization, even under the most favorable con- 
ditions — being in the main physicians, jewelers 
and other artisans, a few mechanics, and 
noblemen's servants, while many were without 
trade or profession. 

Upon arrival in Alexandria, Va. , they found 
that their deeds were valueless, the land never 
having been paid for by the Scioto speculators; 
moreover, the tract was rilled with hostile In- 
dians. However, five hundred of them pushed 
on to the region, by way of Redstone, and 
reached here by flatboat, in a destitute condi- 
tion. The Marietta neighbors were as kind as 
circumstances would allow, and cabins were 
built for them on what is now the Public Square 
of Gallipolis. But they were ignorant of the 
first principles of forestry or gardening; the 
initial winter was exceptionally severe, Indian 
forays sapped the life of the colony, yellow 
fever decimated the survivors; and, altogether, 
the little settlement suffered a series of disas- 



132 On the Storied Ohio 

ters almost unparalleled in the story of Amer- 
ican colonization. 

Although finally reimbursed by Congress 
with a special land grant, the emigrants grad- 
ually died off, until now, so at least we were 
assured, but three families of descendants of 
the original Gauls are now living here. It was 
the American element, aided by sturdy Ger- 
mans, who in time took hold of the decayed 
French settlement, and built up the prosperous 
little town of six thousand inhabitants which 
we find to-day. It is a conservative town, 
with little perceptible increase in population; 
but there are many fine brick blocks, the stores 
have large stocks attractively displayed, and 
there is in general a comfortable tone about 
the place, which pleases a stranger. The 
Public Square, where the first Gauls had their 
little forted town, appears to occupy the space 
of three or four city blocks; there is the cus- 
tomary band-stand in the center, and seats 
plentifully provided along the graveled walks 
which divide neat plots of grass. Over the 
riverward entrance to the square, is an arch of 
gas-pipe, perforated for illumination, and bear- 
ing the dates, "1790- 1890," — a relic, this, of 



A Human Wasp-Nest 133 

the centennial which Gallipolis celebrated in 
the last-named year. 

It was with some difficulty that we found a 
camping-place, this evening. For several 
miles, the approaches were nearly knee-deep in 
mud for a dozen feet back from the water's edge, 
or else the banks were too steep, or the farm- 
ers had cultivated so closely to the brink as to 
leave us no room for the tent. In one grue- 
some spot on the Ohio bank, where a project- 
ing log fortunately served as a pier, the Doctor 
landed for a prospecting tour; while I ascended 
a zigzag path, through steep and rugged land, 
to a nest of squalid cabins perched by a shabby 
hillside road. A vicious dog came down to 
meet me half-way, and might have succeeded 
in carrying off a portion of my clothing had 
not his owner whistled him back. 

A queer, dingy, human wasp-nest, this dirty 
little shanty hamlet of Rosebud. Pigs and 
children wallowed in comradeship, and as every 
cabin on the precipitous slope necessarily has 
a basement, this is used as the common barn 
for chickens, goats, pigs, and cow. It was 
pleasant to find that there was no sweet milk 
to be had in Rosebud, for it is kept in open 
pans, in these fetid rooms, and soon sours — 



134 C> n the Storied Ohio 

and the cows had not yet come down from the 
hills. Water, too, was at a premium. There 
was none to be had, save what had fallen from 
the clouds, and been stored in a foul cistern, 
which seemed common property. I drew a 
pailful of it, not to displease the disheveled 
group which surrounded me, full of questions; 
but on the first turning in the lane, emptied 
the vessel upon the back of a pig, which was 
darting by with tremulous squeal. 

The long twilight was well nigh spent, when, 
on the Ohio side a mile or two above Glen- 
wood, W. Va. (287 miles), we came upon a 
wide, level beach of gravel, below a sloping, 
willowed terrace, above which sharply rose 
the " second bottom." Ascending an angling 
farm roadway, while the others pitched camp, 
I w T alked over the undulating bottom to the 
nearest of a group of small, neat farmhouses, 
and applied for milk. While a buxom maid 
went out and milked a Jersey, that had chanced 
to come home ahead of her fellows, I sat on 
the rear porch gossiping with the farm-wife — 
a Pennsylvania-Dutch dame of ample propor- 
tions, attired in light-blue calico, and with 
huge spectacles over her broad, flat nose. 
She and her "man" own a hundred and fifty 



Bottom Farmers 135 

acres on the bottom, with three cows and other 
stock in proportion, and sell butter to those 
neighbors who have no cows, and to house- 
boat people. As for these latter, though they 
were her customers, she had none too good an 
opinion of them; they pretended to fish, but 
in reality only picked up a living from the 
farmers; nevertheless, she did know of some 
"weakly, delicate people" who had taken to 
boat life for economy's sake, and because an 
invalid could at least fish, and his family help 
him at it. 

Near Huntington, W. Va., Friday, May 
1 8th. — Backed by ravine-grooved hills, and 
edged at the waterside with great picturesque 
boulders, planed and polished by the ever- 
rushing river, the little bottom farms along our 
path to-day are pretty bits. But the houses 
are the reverse of this, having much the aspect 
of slave-cabins of the olden time — small, one- 
story, log and frame shanties, roof and gables 
shingled with "shakes," and little vegetable 
gardens inclosed by palings. The majority of 
these small farmers — whose tracts seldom ex- 
ceed a hundred acres — rent their land, rather 
than own it. The plan seems to be half-and- 



136 On the Storied Ohio 

half as to crops, with a rental fee for house 
and pasturage. One man, having a hundred- 
and-twenty acres, told me he paid three dollars 
a month for his house, and for pasturage a 
dollar a month per head. 

We were in several of the small towns to- 
day. At Millersport, O. (293 miles), while 
W — and the Doctor were up town, the Boy 
and I remained at the wharf-boat to talk with 
the owner. The wharf-boat is a conspicuous 
object at every landing of importance, being a 
covered barge used as a storehouse for coming 
and going steamboat freight. It is a private 
enterprise, for public convenience, with cer- 
tain monopolistic privileges at the incorporated 
towns. This Millersport boat cost twelve hun- 
dred dollars; the proprietor charges twenty per 
cent of each freight-bill, for handling and stor- 
ing goods, a fee of twenty-five cents for each 
steamer that lands, and certain special fees 
for live stock. Athalia, Haskellville, and 
Guyandotte were other representative towns. 
Stave-making appears to be the chief industry, 
and, as timber is getting scarce, the commu- 
nities show signs of decay. 

We had been told, above, that Huntington, 
W. Va. (306 miles), was " a right smart chunk 



Huntington 137 

of a town." And it is. There are sixteen 
thousand people here, in a finely-built city 
spread over a broad, flat plain. Brick and 
stone business buildings abound; the broad 
streets are paved with brick, and an electric- 
car line runs out along the bottom, through 
the suburb of Ceredo, W. Va., to Catletts- 
burg, Ky., nine miles away. Huntington 
is the center of a large group of riverside towns 
supported by iron-making and other indus- 
tries — Guyandotte and Ceredo, in West Vir- 
ginia; Catlettsburg, just over the border in 
Kentucky; and Proctorville, Broderickville, 
Frampton, Burlington, and South Point, on 
the opposite shore. 

We are camping to-night in the dense wil- 
low grove which lines the West Virginia beach 
from Huntington to the Big Sandy. Above 
us, on the wide terrace, are fields and orchards, 
beyond which we occasionally hear the gong 
of electric cars. A public path runs by the 
tent, leading from the lower settlements into 
Huntington. Among our visitors have been 
two houseboat men, whose craft is moored a 
quarter of a mile below. One of them is tall, 
thick-set, forty, with a round, florid face, and 
huge mustaches, — evidently a jolly fellow at 



138 On the Storied Ohio 

his best, despite a certain dubious, piratical 
air; a jaunty, narrow-brimmed straw hat is 
perched over one ear, to add to the general 
effect; and between his teeth a corn-cob pipe. 
His younger companion is medium-sized, slim, 
and loose-jointed, with a baggy gait, his cap 
thrown over his head, with the visor in the 
rear — a rustic clown, not yet outgrown his 
freckles. But three weeks from the parental 
farm in Putnam County, Ky. , the world is as 
yet a romance to him. The fellow is inter- 
esting, because in him can be seen the genesis 
of a considerable element of the houseboat 
fraternity. I wonder how long it will be be- 
fore his partner has him broken in as a river- 
pirate of the first water. 



CHAPTER XII. 

In a fog — The Big Sandy — Rainy weath- 
er — Operatic gypsies — An ancient tav- 
ern. 

Ironton, O., Saturday, May 19th. — When 
we turned in, last night, it was refreshingly 
cool. Heavy clouds were scurrying across the 
face of the moon. By midnight, a copious 
rain was falling, wind-gusts were flapping our 
roof, and a sudden drop in temperature ren- 
dered sadly inadequate all the clothing we 
could muster into service. We slept late, in 
consequence, and, after rigging a wind-break 
with the rubber blankets, during breakfast 
huddled around the stove which had been 
brought in to replace Pilgrim under the fly. 
When, at half-past nine, we pushed off, our 
houseboat neighbors thrust their heads from 
the window and waved us farewell. 

A dense fog hung like a cloud over land and 
river. There was a stiff north-east wind, 
which we avoided by seeking the Ohio shore, 
139 



140 On the Storied Ohio 

where the high hills formed a break; there 
too, the current was swift, and carried us 
down right merrily. Shattered by the wind, 
great banks of fog rolled up stream, sometimes 
enveloping us so as to narrow our view to a 
radius of a dozen rods, — again, through the 
rifts, giving us momentary glimpses on the 
right, of rich green hills, towering dark and 
steep above us, iridescent with browns, and 
grays, and many shades of green; of white- 
washed cabins, single or in groups, standing 
out with startling distinctness from som- 
bre backgrounds; of houseboats, many-hued, 
moored to willowed banks or bolstered high 
upon shaly beaches; of the opposite bottom, 
with its corrugated cliff of clay; and, now and 
then, a slowly-puffing steamboat cautiously 
feeling its way through the chilling gloom — a 
monster to be avoided by little Pilgrim and her 
crew, for the possibility of being run down in 
a fog is not pleasant to contemplate. On 
board one of these steamers was a sorry com- 
pany — apparently a Sunday-school excursion. 
Children in gala dress huddled in swarms to 
the lee of the great smoke-stacks, and in im- 
agination we heard their teeth chatter as they 



The Big Sandy 141 

glided by us and in another moment were en- 
gulfed in the mist. 

We catch sight for a moment, through a 
cloud crevasse, of Ceredo, the last town in 
West Virginia — a small saw-milling commu- 
nity stuck upon the edge of the clay cliff, with 
the broad level bottom stretching out behind 
like a prairie. A giant railway bridge here 
spans the Ohio — a weird, impressive thing, as 
we sweep under it in the swirling current, and 
crane our necks to see the great stone piers 
lose themselves in the cloud. But the Big 
Sandy River (315 miles), which divides West 
Virginia and Kentucky, was wholly lost to 
view. In an opening a few moments later, 
however, we had a glimpse of the dark line of 
her valley, below which the hills again descend 
to the Ohio's bank. 

Catlettsburg, the first Kentucky town, is at 
the junction, and extends along the foot of 
the ridge for a mile or two, apparently not 
over two blocks wide, with a few outlying 
shanties on the shoulders of the uplands. 
Washington was surveying here, on the Big 
Sandy, in 1770, and entered for one John Fry 
2,084 acres round the site of Louisa, a dozen 
miles up the river; this was the first survey 



142 On the Storied Ohio 

made in Kentucky — but a few months later 
than Boone's first advent as a hunter on the 
''dark and bloody ground," and five years 
before the first permanent settlement in the 
State. Washington deserves to be remem- 
bered as a Kentucky pioneer. 

We have not only steamers to avoid, — they 
appear to be unusually numerous about here, — 
but snags as well. With care, the whereabouts 
of a steamer can be distinguished as it steals 
upon us, from the superior whiteness of its col- 
umn of ' ' exhaust, " penetrating the bank of 
dark gray fog; and occasionally the echoes 
are awakened by the burly roar of its whistle, 
which, in times like this, acts as a fog-horn. 
But the snag is an insidious enemy, not re- 
vealing itself until we are within a rod or two, 
and then there is a quick cry of warning from 
the stern sheets — "Hard a-port!" or "Star- 
board, quick!" and only a strong side-pull, 
aided by W — 's paddle, sends us free from the 
jagged, branching mass which might readily 
have swamped poor Pilgrim had she taken it 
at full tilt. 

At Ashland, Ky. (320 miles), we stopped 
for supplies. There are six thousand inhab- 
itants here, with some good buildings and a 



At the Levee 



H3 



fine, broad, stone wharf, but it is rather a dingy 
place. The steamer "Bonanza" had just 
landed. On the double row of flaggings lead- 
ing up to the summit of the bank, were two 
ant-like processions of Kentucky folk — one, 
leisurely climbing townward with their bags 
and bundles, the other hurrying down with 
theirs to the boat, which was ringing its bell, 
blowing off steam, and in other ways creating 
an uproar which seemed to turn the heads of 
the negro roustabouts and draymen, who 
bustled around with a great chatter and much 
false motion. The railway may be doing the 
bulk of the business, but it does it unostenta- 
tiously; the steamboat makes far more disturb- 
ance in the world, and is a finer spectacle. 
Dozens of boys are lounging at the wharf 
foot, watching the lively scene with fascinated 
eyes, probably every one of them stoutly pos- 
sessed of an ambition akin to that of my 
young friend in the Cheshire Bottom. 

A rain-storm broke the fog — a cold, raw, 
miserable rain. No clothing we could don 
appeared to suffice against the chill; and so at 
last we pitched camp upon the Ohio shore, 
three miles above the Ironton wharf (325 
miles). It is a muddy, dreary nest up here, 



144 On ^e Storied Ohio 

among the dripping willows. Just behind us 
on the slope, is the inclined track of the Nor- 
folk & Western railway-transfer, down which 
trains are slid to a huge slip, and thence ferried 
over the river into Kentucky; above that, on a 
narrow terrace, is an ordinary railway line; and 
still higher, up a slippery clay bank, lies the 
cottage-strewn bottom which stretches on into 
Ironton (13,000 inhabitants). 

We were a sorry-looking party, at lunch this 
noon, hovering over the smoking stove which 
was set in the tent door, with a wind-screen 
in front, and moist bedding hung all about in 
the vain hope of drying it in the feeble heat. 
And sorrier still, through the long afternoon, 
as, each encased in a sleeping-bag, we sat upon 
our cots circling around the stove, W — read- 
ing to us between chattering teeth from Bar- 
rie's When a Mans Single. Tis good Scot- 
tish weather we're having; but somehow our 
thoughts could not rest on Thrums, and we 
were, for the nonce, a wee bit miserable. 

Dinner degenerated into a smoky bite, and 
then at dusk there was a council of war. The 
air hangs thick with moisture, our possessions 
are in various stages from damp to sopping 
wet, and efforts at drying over the little stove 



Seeking Shelter 145 

are futile under such conditions. It was dem- 
onstrated that there was not bed-clothing 
enough, in such an emergency as this; indeed, 
an inspection of that which was merely damp, 
revealed the fact that but one person could 
be made comfortable to-night. Our bachelor 
Doctor volunteered to be that one. So we 
bade him God-speed, and with toilet bag in 
hand I led my little family up a tortuous path, 
so slippery in the rain that we were obliged in 
our muddy climb to cling to grass-clumps and 
bushes. And thus, wet and bedraggled, did 
we sally forth upon the Ironton Bottom, seek- 
ing shelter for the night. 

Fortunately we had not far to seek. A 
kindly family took us in, despite our gruesome 
aspect and our unlikely story — for what man- 
ner of folk are we, that go trapesing about in 
a skiff, in such weather as this, coming from 
nobody knows where and camping o' nights in 
the muddy river bottoms? Instead of sending 
us on, in the drenching rain, to a hotel, three 
miles down the road, or offering us a ticket on 
the Associated Charities, these blessed people 
open their hearts and their beds to us, without 
question, and what more can weary pilgrims 
pray for? 



146 On the Storied Ohio 

Sciotoville, O., Sunday, May 20th. — After 
breakfast, and settling our modest score, we 
rejoined the Doctor, and at ten o'clock pulled 
out again; being bidden good-bye at the land- 
ing, by the children of our hostess, who had 
sent us by them a bottle of fresh milk as a 
parting gift. 

It had rained almost continuously, through- 
out the night. To-day we have a dark gray 
sky, with fickle winds. A charming color 
study, all along our path: the reds and grays 
and yellows of the high clay-banks which edge 
the reciprocating bottoms, the browns and 
yellows of hillside fields, the deep greens of 
forest verdure, the vivid white of bankside 
cabins, and, in the background of each new 
vista, bold headlands veiled in blue. W — 
and the Boy are in the stern sheets, wrapped 
in blankets, for there is a smart chill in the air, 
and we at the oars pull lively for warmth. In 
our twisting course, sometimes we have a 
favoring breeze, and the Doctor rears the sail; 
but it is a brief delight, for the next turn brings 
the wind in our teeth, and we set to the blades 
with renewed energy. In the main, we make 
good time. The sugar-loaf hills, with their 



A Gypsy Lunch 147 

castellated escarpments, go marching by with 
stately sweep. 

Greenup Court House (334 miles) is a bright 
little Kentucky county-seat, well-built at the 
feet of thickly-forested uplands. At the lower 
end of the village, the Little Sandy enters 
through a wooded dale, which near the mouth 
opens into a broad meadow. Not many miles 
below, is a high sloping beach, picturesquely 
bestrewn with gigantic boulders which have in 
ages past rolled down from the hill-tops above. 
Here, among the rocks, we again set up a rude 
screen from the still piercing wind; and, each 
wrapped in a gay blanket, lunch as operatic 
gypsies might, in a romantic glen, enjoying 
mightily our steaming chocolate, and the 
warmth of our friendly stove — for dessert, 
taking a merry scamper for flowers, over the 
ragged ascent from whence the boulders came. 
Everywhere about is the trumpet creeper, but 
not yet in bloom. The Indian turnip is in 
blossom here, and so the smaller Solomon's 
seal, yellow spikes of toad-flax, blue and pink 
phlox, glossy May apple; high up on the hill- 
side, the fire pink and wintergreen; and, down 
by the sandy shore, great beds of blue wild 



148 On the Storied Ohio 

lupin, and occasionally stately spikes of the 
familiar moth mullein. 

With the temperature falling rapidly, and a 
drizzling rain taking the starch out of our en- 
thusiasm, we early sought a camping ground. 
For miles along here, springs ooze from the 
base of the high clay bank walling in the wide 
and rocky Ohio beach, and dry spots are few 
and far between. We found one, however, a 
half mile above Little Scioto River (346 
miles),* with drift-wood enough to furnish us 
for years, and the beach thick-strewn with fos- 
sils of a considerable variety of small bivalves, 
which latter greatly delighted the Doctor and 
the Boy, who have brought enough specimens 
to the tent door to stock a college museum. 

Dinner over, the crew hauled Pilgrim under 
cover, and within prepared for her sailing- 
master a cosy bed, with the entire ship's stock 
of sleeping-bags and blankets. W — , the Boy, 
and I then started off to find quarters in Scio- 
toville (1,000 inhabitants), which lies just 
below the river's mouth, here a dozen rods 



*Two miles up the Little Scioto, Pine Creek enters. Per- 
haps a mile and a half up this creek was, in 177 1, a Mingo 
town called Horse Head Bottom, which cuts some figure in 
border history as a nest of Indian marauders. 



A Riverside Tavern 149 

wide. Scrambling up the slimy bank, through 
a maze of thorn trees, brambles, and sycamore 
scrubs, we gained the fertile bottom above, all 
luscious with tall grasses bespangled with wild 
red roses and the showy pentstemon. The 
country road leading into the village is some 
distance inland, but at last we found it just 
beyond a patch of Indian corn waist high, and 
followed it, through a covered bridge, and 
down to a little hotel at the lower end of town. 
A quaint, old-fashioned house, the Scioto- 
ville tavern, with an inner gallery looking out 
into a small garden of peaches, apples, pears, 
plums, and grapes — a famous grape country 
this, by the way. In our room, opening from 
the gallery, is an antique high-post bedstead; 
everywhere about are similar relics of an early 
day. In keeping with the air of serene old 
age, which pervades the hostelry, is the white- 
haired landlady herself. In well-starched 
apron, white cap, and gold-rimmed glasses, 
she benignly sits rocking by the office stove, 
her feet on the fender, reading Wallace's 
Prince of India; and looking, for all the world, 
as if she had just stepped out of some old 
portrait of — well, of a tavern-keeping Martha 
Washington. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The Scioto, and the Shawanese — A night 
at Rome — Limestone — Keels, flats, ani3 
boatmen of the olden time. 

Rome, O., Monday, May 21st. — At inter- 
vals through the night, rain fell, and the temp- 
erature was but 46 at sunrise. However, 
by the time we were afloat, the sun was fit- 
fully gleaming through masses of gray cloud, 
for a time giving promise of a warmer day. 
Dark shadows rested on the romantic ravines, 
and on the deep hollows of the hills; but else- 
where over this gentle landscape of wooded 
amphitheatres, broad green meadows, rocky 
escarpments, and many-colored fields, light 
and shade gayly chased each other. Never 
were the vistas of the widening river more 
beautiful than to-day. 

There are saw-mill and fire-brick industries 

in the little towns, which would be shabby 

enough in the full glare of day. But they are 

all glorified in this changing light, which 

150 



Shannoah Town 1 5 1 

brings out the rich yellows and reds in sharp 
relief against the gloomy background of the 
hills, and mellows into loveliness the soft 
grays of unpainted wood. 

At the mouth of the Scioto (354 miles), is 
Portsmouth, O. (15,000 inhabitants), a well- 
built, substantial town, with good shops. It lies 
on a hill-backed terrace some forty feet above 
the level of the neighboring bottoms, which 
give evidence of being victims of the high 
floods periodically covering the low lands 
about the junction of the rivers. Just across 
the Scioto is Alexandria, and on the Kentucky 
side of the Ohio can be seen the white hamlet 
of Springville, at the feet of the dentated hills 
which here closely approach the river. 

The country about the mouth of the Scioto 
has long figured in Western annals. Being a 
favorite rendezvous for the Shawanese, it nat- 
urally became a resort for French and Eng- 
lish fur-traders. The principal part of the 
first Shawanese village — Shannoah Town, in 
the old journals — was below the Scioto's 
mouth, on the site of Alexandria; it was the 
chief town of this considerable tribe, and here 
Gist was warned back, when in March, 1 75 1 , 
he ventured thus far while inspecting lands for 



152 On the Storied Ohio 

the Ohio Company. Two years later, there 
was a great — perhaps an unprecedented — flood 
in the Ohio, the water rising fifty feet above 
the ordinary level, and destroying the larger 
part of the Shawanese village. Some of the 
Indians moved to the Little Miami, and others 
up the Scioto, where they built, successively, 
Old and New Chillicothe; but the majority 
remained, and rebuilt their town on the higher 
land north of the Scioto, where Portsmouth 
now stands. An outlying band had had, from 
before Gist's day, a small town across the 
Ohio, the site of Springville; and it was here 
that George Croghan had his stone trading 
house, which was doubtless, after the manner 
of the times, a frontier fortress. In the 
French and Indian war (1758), the Shawanese, 
tiring of continual conflict, withdrew from 
their Ohio River settlements to Old (or Up- 
per) Chillicothe, and thus closed the once im- 
portant fur-trade at the mouth of the Scioto. 
It was while the Indian town at Portsmouth 
was still new (1755), that a party of Shawan- 
ese brought here a Mrs. Mary Ingles, whom 
they had captured while upon a scalping foray 
into Southwestern Virginia. The story of the 
remarkable escape of this woman, at Big 



A Thrilling Escape 153 

Bone Lick, of her long and terrible flight 
through the wilderness along the- southern 
bank of the Ohio and up the Great Kanawha 
Valley, and her final return to home and kin- 
dred, who viewed her as one delivered from 
the grave, is one of the most thrilling in West- 
ern history.* 

Although the Shawanese had removed from 
their villages on the Ohio, they still lived in 
new towns in the north, within easy striking 
distance of the great river; and, until the 
close of the eighteenth century, were a con- 
tinual source of alarm to those whose busi- 
ness led them to follow this otherwise inviting 
highway to the continental interior. Flat- 
boats bearing traders, immigrants, and trav- 
elers were frequently waylaid by the savages, 
who exhausted a fertile ingenuity in luring 
their victims to an ambuscade ashore; and, 
when not successful in this, would in narrow 
channels, or when the current swept the craft 
near land, subject the voyagers to a fierce fus- 
ilade of bullets, against which even stout plank 
barricades proved of small avail. 

* See Shaler's Kentucky (Amer. Commonwealth series), 
Collins's History of Kentucky, and Hale's Trans-Allegkany 
Pioneers. Shaler gives the date as 1756; but Hale, a descend- 
ant of Mrs. Ingles, makes it 1755. 



1 54 On the Storied Ohio 

Vanceburgh, Ky. (375 miles), is a little town 
at the bottom of a pretty amphitheatre of 
hills. There was a floating photographer 
there, as we passed, with a gang-plank run 
out to the shore, and framed specimens of his 
work hung along the town side of his ample 
barge. Men with teams were getting wagon- 
loads of sand from the beach, for building 
purposes. And, a mile or two down, a float- 
ing saw and planing-mill — the "Clipper," 
which we had seen before, up river — was 
busied upon logs which were being rolled down 
the beach from the bank above. There are 
several such mills upon the river, all seem- 
ingly occupied with "tramp work," for there 
is a deal of logging carried on, in a small and 
careful way, by farmers living on these wooded 
hills. 

Vanceburgh was for the time bathed in 
sunlight; but, as we continued on our way, a 
heavy rain-cloud came creeping up over the 
dark Ohio hills, and, descending, cut off our 
view, at last lustily pelting us as we sat en- 
cased in rubber. We had been in our pon- 
chos most of the day, as much for warmth as 
for shelter; for there was an all-pervading 
chill, which the fickle sun, breaking its early 



Cistern Water 155 

promise, had failed to dissipate. Thus, amid 
showers alternating with sunbeams, we pro- 
ceeded unto Rome (381 miles). An Ohio 
village, this Rome, and so fallen from its once 
proud estate that its postoffice no longer bears 
the name — it is simply " Stout's," if, in these 
degenerate days, you would send a letter 
hither. 

It was smartly raining, when we put in on 
the stony beach above Rome. The tent went 
up in a hurry, and under it the cargo ; but by 
the time all was housed the sun gushed out 
again, and, stretching a line, we soon had our 
bedding hung to dry. It is a charming situa- 
tion; in this melting atmosphere, we have 
perhaps the most striking effects of cloud, hill, 
bottom, islands, and glancing river, which 
have yet been vouchsafed us. 

The Romans, like most rural folk along the 
river below Wheeling, chiefly drink cistern 
water. Earlier in our pilgrimage, we stoutly 
declined to patronize these rain-water reser- 
voirs, and I would daily go far afield in search 
of a well; but lately, necessity has driven us 
to accept the cistern, and often we find it 
even preferable to the well, on those rare oc- 
casions when the latter can be found at vil- 



156 On the Storied Ohio 

lages or farm-houses. But there are cisterns 
and cisterns — foul holes like that at Rosebud, 
others that are neatness itself, with all man- 
ner of grades between. As for river water, 
ever yellow with clay, and thick as to motes, 
much of it is used in the country parts. This 
morning, a bevy of negroes came down the 
bank from a Kentucky field; and each in turn, 
creeping out on a drift log, — for the ground is 
usually muddy a few feet up from the water's 
edge, — lay flat on his stomach and drank 
greedily from the roily mess. 

At dusk, there was again a damp chill, and 
for the third time we left the Doctor to keep 
bachelor's hall upon the beach. It was rain- 
ing smartly by the time the tavern was reached, 
nearly a mile down the bank. Our advent 
caused a rare scurrying to and fro, for two 
commercial "drummers," who were to depart 
by the early morning boat, occupied the 
"reg'lar spar' room," the landlady informed us, 
and a bit of a cubby-hole off the back stairs 
had to be arranged for us. Guests are rari- 
ties, at the hostelry in Rome. 

Near Ripley, O., Tuesday, May 22nd. — 
There was an inch of snow last night, on the 



The Rival Banks 157 

hills about, and a morning Cincinnati paper 
records a heavy fall in the Pennsylvania 
mountains. The storm is general, and the 
river rose two feet over night. When we set 
off, in mid-morning, it was raining heavily; 
but in less than an hour the clouds broke, and 
the rest of the day has been an alternation of 
chilling showers and bursts of warm sunshine, 
with the same succession of alluring vistas, 
over which play broad bands of changing light 
and shade, and overhead the storm clouds torn 
and tossed in the upper currents. 

Our landlord at Rome asserted at breakfast 
that Kentucky was fifty years behind the Ohio 
side, in improvements of every sort. Thus far, 
we have not ourselves noticed differences of 
that degree. Doubtless before the late civil 
war, — all the ante-bellum travelers agree in 
this, — when the blight of slavery was resting 
on Virginia and Kentucky, the south shore of 
the Ohio was as another country; but to-day, 
so far as we can ascertain from a surface view, 
the little villages on either side are equally 
dingy and woe-begone, and large Southern 
towns like Wheeling, Parkersburg, Point 
Pleasant, and Maysville are very nearly an 
offset to Steubenville, Marietta, Pomeroy, 



158 On the Storied Ohio 

Ironton, and Portsmouth. North-shore towns 
of wealth and prominence are more numerous 
than on the Dixie bank, and are as a rule 
larger and somewhat better kept, with the 
negro element less conspicuous; but to say 
that the difference is anywhere near as marked 
as the landlord averred, or as my own previous 
reading on the subject led me to expect, is 
grossly to exaggerate. 

After leaving Manchester, O. (394 miles), 
with a beautiful island at its door, there are 
spasmodic evidences of the nearness of a 
great city market. A large proportion of the 
hills are completely denuded of their timber, 
and patched with rectangular fields of green, 
brown, and yellow; upon the bottoms there 
are frequent truck farms; now and then are 
stone quarries upon the banks, with capacious 
barges moored in front; and upon one or two 
rocky ledges were stone-crushers, getting out 
material for concrete pavements. When we 
ask the bargemen, in passing, whither their 
loads are destined, the invariable reply is, 
' ' The city " — meaning Cincinnati, still seventy 
miles away. 

Limestone Creek (405 miles) occupies a large 
space in Western story, for so insignificant 



Limestone Creek 1^9 

a stream. It is now not over a rod in width, 
and at no season can it be over two or three. 
One finds it with difficulty along the mill- 
strewn shore of Maysville, Ky. , the modern 
outgrowth of the Limestone village of pioneer 
days. Limestone, settled four years before 
Marietta or Cincinnati, was long Kentucky's 
chief port of entry on the Ohio; immigrants 
to the new state, who came down the Ohio, 
almost invariably booked for this point, thence 
taking stage to Lexington, and travelers in the 
early day seldom passed it by unvisited. But 
years before there was any settlement here, 
the valley of Limestone Creek, which comes 
gently down from low-lying hills, was regarded 
as a convenient doorway into Kentucky. 
When (1776) George Rogers Clark was com- 
ing down the river from Pittsburg, with pow- 
der given by Patrick Henry, then governor of 
Virginia, for the defence of Kentucky settlers 
from British-incited savages, he was chased 
by the latter, and, putting into this creek, 
hastily buried the precious cargo on its banks. 
From here it was cautiously taken overland 
to the little forts, by relays of pioneers, through 
a gauntlet of murderous fire. 

About twenty-five miles from Limestone, 



160 On the Storied Ohio 

too, was another attraction of the early time, — 
the great Blue Lick sulphur spring; here, in a 
valley surrounded by wooded hills, formerly 
congregated great herds of buffalo and deer, 
which licked the salty earth, and hunters soon 
learned that this was a royal ground for game. 
The Battle of the Blue Lick (1782) will ever 
be famous in the annals of Kentucky. 

The Ohio was a mighty waterway into the 
continental interior, in the olden days of Lime- 
stone. Its only compeer was the so-called 
" Wilderness Road," overland through Cum- 
berland Gap — the successor of ' ' Boone's trail, " 
just as Braddock's Road was the outgrowth of 
' ' Nemacolin's path. " Until several years after 
the Revolutionary War, the country north of 
the Ohio was still Indian land, and settlement 
was restricted to the region south of the river; 
so that practically all West-going roads from 
the coast colonies centered either on Fort 
Pitt or Redstone, or on Cumberland Gap. On 
the out-going trip, the Wilderness Road was 
the more toilsome of the two, but it was safer, 
for the Ohio's banks were beset with thieving 
and often murdering savages. In returning 
east, many who had descended the river pre- 
ferred going overland through the Gap, to 



Two Routes Westward 1 6 1 

painfully pulling up stream through the shal- 
lows, with the danger of Indians many times 
greater than when gliding down the deep cur- 
rent. The distance over the two routes from 
Philadelphia, was nearly equal, when the wind- 
ings of the river were taken into account; but 
the Carolinians and the Georgians found 
Boone's Wilderness Road the shorter of the 
two, in their migrations to the promised land 
of ' ' OF Kaintuck. " And we should not over- 
look the fact, that of much importance was 
still a third route, up the James and down the 
Great Kanawha; a route whose advantage to 
Virginia, Washington early saw, and tried in 
vain to have improved by a canal connecting 
the two rivers.* 

Even before the opening of the Revolution, 
the Ohio was the path of a considerable emi- 
gration. We have seen Washington going 
down to the Great Kanawha with his survey- 
ing party, in 1770, and finding that settlers 
were hurrying into the country for a hundred 
miles below Fort Pitt. By the close of the 
Revolution, the Ohio was a familiar stream. 
Pittsburg, from a small trading hamlet and 

* See ante, p. 126. 
11 



1 62 On the Storied Ohio 

fording-place, had grown by 1785 to have a 
thousand inhabitants, chiefly supported by 
boat-building and the Kentucky carrying trade; 
and boat-yards were common up both the 
Monongahela and the Youghiogheny, for a 
distance of sixty miles. Nevertheless, it was 
not until 1792 that there were regular conven- 
iences for carrying passengers and freight down 
the Ohio; the emigrant or trader, on arrival 
at Pittsburg or Redstone, had generally to 
wait until he could either charter a boat or 
have one built for him, although sometimes he 
found a chance " passenger flat" going down.* 
This difficulty in securing river transportation 
was one of the reasons why the majority chose 
the Wilderness Road. 

' ' The first thing that strikes a stranger from 
the Atlantic," says Flint (18 14), "is the sin- 
gular, whimsical, and amusing spectacle of the 
varieties of water-craft, of all shapes and 
structures." These, Flint, who knew the 

* Palmer (18 17) paid five dollars for his passage from Pitts- 
burg to Cincinnati (465 miles), without food, and fifty cents 
per hundred pounds for freight to Marietta. Imlay (1792) 
says the rate in his time from Pittsburg to Limestone was 
twenty-five cents per hundred. In 1803, Harris paid four 
dollars-and-a-half per hundred for freight, by wagon from 
Baltimore to Pittsburg. 



Early Water Craft 163 

river well, separates into seven classes: (1) 
"Stately barges," the size of an Atlantic 
schooner, with "a raised and outlandish-look- 
ing deck;" one of these required a crew of 
twenty-five to work it up stream. (2) Keel- 
boats — long, slender, and graceful in form, 
carrying from fifteen to thirty tons, easily pro- 
pelled over the shallows, and much used in 
low water, and in hunting trips to Missouri, 
Arkansas, and the Red River country. (3) 
Kentucky flats (or ' ' broad-horns"), ' ' a species 
of ark, very nearly resembling a New England 
pig-stye;" these were from forty to a hundred 
feet in length, fifteen feet in beam, and car- 
ried from twenty to seventy tons. Some of 
these flats were not unlike the house-boats of 
to-day. "It is no uncommon spectacle to see 
a large family, old and young, servants, cattle, 
hogs, horses, sheep, fowls, and animals of all 
kinds," all embarked on one such bottom. (4) 
Covered "sleds," ferry-flats, or Alleghany 
skiffs, carrying from eight to twelve tons. (5) 
Pirogues, of from two to four tons burthen, 
"sometimes hollowed from one big tree, or 
the trunks of two trees united, and a plank 
rim fitted to the upper part." (6) Common 
skiffs and dug-outs. (7) "Monstrous anom- 



164 On the Storied Ohio 

alies," not classifiable, and often whimsical in 
design. To these might be added the ' * float- 
ing shops or stores, with a small flag out to indi- 
cate their character," so frequently seen by 
Palmer (18 17), and thriftily surviving unto this 
day, minus the flag. And Hall (1828) speaks of a 
flat-bottomed row-boat, ' 'twelve feet long, with 
high sides and roof," carrying an aged couple 
down the river, they cared not where, so long 
as they could find a comfortable home in the 
West, for their declining and now childless 
years. 

The first four classes here enumerated, were 
allowed to drift down stream with the current, 
being steered by long sweeps hung on pivots. 
The average speed was about three miles an 
hour, but the distances made were consider- 
able, from the fact that in the earliest days 
they were, from fear of Indians, usually kept 
on the move through day and night, — the 
crew taking turns at the sweeps, that the craft 
might not be hung up on shore or entangled 
in the numerous snags and sawyers. In going 
up stream, the sweeps served as oars, and in 
the shallows long pushing-poles were used. 

As for the boatmen who professionally pro- 
pelled the keels and flats of the Ohio, they 



The Flatboatmen 165 

were a class unto themselves — "half horse, 
half alligator," a contemporary styled them. 
Rough fellows, much given to fighting, and 
drunkenness, and ribaldry, with a genius for 
coarse drollery and stinging repartee. The 
river towns suffered sadly at the hands of this 
lawless, dissolute element. Each boat carried 
from thirty to forty boatmen, and a number 
of such boats frequently traveled in company. 
After the Indian scare was over, they generally 
stopped over night in the settlements, and the 
arrival of a squadron was certain to be fol- 
lowed by a disturbance akin to those so familiar 
a few years ago in our Southwest, when the 
cowboys would undertake to "paint a town 
red." The boatmen were reckless of life, 
limb, and reputation, and were often more 
numerous than those of the villagers who cared 
to enforce the laws; while there was always 
present an element which abetted and throve 
on the vice of the river-men. The result was 
that mischief, debauchery, and outrage ran 
riot, and in the inevitable fights the citizens 
were generally beaten. 

The introduction of steamboats (18 14) soon 
effected a revolution. A steamer could carry 
ten times as much as a barge, could go five 



1 66 On the Storied Ohio 

times as fast, and required fewer men; it trav- 
eled at night, quickly passing from one port 
to another, pausing only to discharge or re- 
ceive cargo; its owners and officers were men 
of character and responsibility, with much 
wealth in their charge, and insisted on disci- 
pline and correct deportment. The flatboat 
and the keel-boat were soon laid up to rot on 
the banks; and the boatmen either became 
respectable steamboat hands and farmers, or 
went into the Far West, where wild life was 
still possible. 

Shipment on the river, in the flatboat days, 
was only during the spring and autumnal 
floods; although an occasional summer rise, 
such as we are now getting, would cause a 
general activity. In the autumn of 1818, 
Hall reports that three millions of dollars' 
worth of merchandise were lying on the shores 
of the Monongahela, waiting for a rise of water 
to float them to their destination. "The 
Western merchants were lounging discontent- 
edly about the streets of Pittsburg, or moping 
idly in its taverns, like the victims of an ague." 
The steamers did something to alleviate this 
condition of affairs; but it was not until the 
coming of railways, to carry goods quickly and 



A Gretna Green 167 

cheaply across country to deep-water ports 
like Wheeling, that permanent relief was felt. 

But what of the Maysville of to-day? It 
extends on both sides of Limestone Creek for 
about two miles along the Kentucky shore, at 
no point apparently over five squares wide, 
and for the most part but two or three; for 
back of it forested hills rise sharply. There 
is a variety of industries, the business quarter 
is substantially built, and there are numerous 
comfortable homes with pretty lawns. 

On the opposite shore is Aberdeen, where 
Kentucky swains and lasses, who for one rea- 
son or another fail to get a license at home, 
find marriage made easy — a peaceful, pleasant, 
white village, with trees a-plenty, and roman- 
tic hills shutting out the north wind. 

We are camped to-night on a picturesque 
sand-slope, at the foot of a willow-edged bot- 
tom, and some seven feet above the river level. 
We need to perch high, for the storm has been 
general through the basin, and the Ohio is 
rising steadily. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

Produce boats— A dead town — On the 
Great Bend — Grant's birthplace — The 
Little Miami — The genesis of Cincin- 
nati. 

Point Pleasant, O., Wednesday, May 
23rd. — The river rose three feet during the 
night. Steamers go now at full speed, no 
longer fearing the bars; and the swash upon 
shore was so violent that I was more than 
once awakened, each time to find the water 
line creeping nearer and nearer to the tent 
door. As we sweep onward to-day, upon an 
accelerated current, the fringing willows, 
whose roots before the rise were many feet up 
the slopes of sand and gravel, are gracefully- 
dipping their boughs in the rushing flood. 
With the rise, come the sweepings of the 
beaches — bits of lumber, fallen trees, barrels, 
boxes, 'longshore rubbish of every sort; some- 
times it hangs in ragged rafts, and we steer 
clear of such, for Pilgrim's progress is greater 
than that of these unwelcome companions of 
168 



Tobacco 169 

the voyage, and we wish no entangling alli- 
ances. 

Much tobacco is raised on the rounded, 
gently-sloping hills below Maysville. Away 
up on the acclivities, in sheltered spots near 
the fields in which they are to be transplanted, 
or in fence-corners in the ever-broadening 
bottoms, we note white patches of thin cloth 
pinned down over the young plants to protect 
them from untoward frosts. There are many 
tobacco warehouses to be seen along the 
banks — apparently farmers cooperate in main- 
taining such; and in front of each, a roadway 
leads down to the water's edge, indicating a 
steamboat landing. On the town wharves are 
often seen portly barrels, — locally, "punch- 
eons," — filled with the weed, awaiting ship- 
ment by boat; most of the product goes to 
Louisville, but there are also large buyers in 
the smaller Kentucky towns. 

Occasionally, to-day, we have seen moored 
to some rustic landing a great covered barge, 
quite of the fashion of the golden age of Ohio 
boating. At one end, a room is partitioned 
off to serve as cabin, and the sweeps are oper- 
ated from the roof. These are produce- 
boats, which are laden with coarse vegetables 



170 On the Storied Ohio 

and sometimes live stock, and floated down 
to Cincinnati or Louisville, and even to St. 
Louis and New Orleans. In ante-bellum 
days, produce-boats were common enough, 
and much money was made by speculative 
buyers who would dispose of their cargo in 
the most favorable port, sell the barge, and 
then return by rail or steamer; just as, in 
still earlier days, the keel or flatboat owner 
would sell both freight and vessel on the 
Lower Mississippi, — or abandon the craft if 
he could not sell it, — and "hoof it home," as 
a contemporary chronicler puts it. 

Ripley, Levanna (417 miles), Higginsport 
(421 miles), Chilo (431 miles), Neville (435 
miles), and Point Pleasant (442 miles) are the 
Ohio towns to-day; and Dover (417 miles), 
Augusta (424 miles), and Foster (435 miles), 
their rivals on the Kentucky shore. Saw- 
mills and distilleries are the leading industries, 
and there are broad paved wharves; but a 
listless air pervades them all, as if once they 
basked in the light of better days. Foster is 
rather the shabbiest of the lot. As I passed 
through to find the postomce, at the upper 
edge of town, where the hills come down 
to meet the bottom, I saw that half of the 



A Natural Death 171 

store buildings still intact were closed, many 
dwellings and warehouses were in ruins, and 
numerous open cellars were grown to grass 
and weeds. Few people were in sight, and 
they loafing at the corners. The postoffice 
occupied a vacated store, evidently not swept 
these six months past. The youthful master, 
with chair tilted back and his feet on an old 
washstand which did duty as office table, was 
listlessly whittling a finger-ring from a peach- 
stone; but shoving his feet along, he made 
room for me to write a postal card which I 
had brought for the purpose. 

"What is the matter with this town?" I 
asked, as I scratched away. 

"Daid, I reck'n!" and he blew away the 
peach-stone dust which had accumulated in 
the folds of his greasy vest. 

" Yes, I see it is dead. What killed it?" 

"Oh! just gone daid — sort o' nat'ral daith, 
I reck'n." 

We had a pretty view this morning, three 
or four miles below Augusta, from the top of 
a tree-denuded Kentucky hill, some two hun- 
dred and fifty feet high. Hauling Pilgrim 
into the willows, we set out over a low, culti- 
vated bottom, whose edges were being lapped 



172 On the Storied Ohio 

by the rising river, to the detriment of the 
springing corn; then scrambling up the ter- 
race on which the Chesapeake & Ohio railway 
runs, we crawled under a barb-wire fence, 
and ascended through a pasture, our right of 
way contested for a moment by a gigantic 
Berkshire boar, which was not easily van- 
quished. When at last we gained the top, by 
dint of clambering over rail-fences and up 
steep slopes bestrewn with mulleins and boul- 
ders, and over patches of freshly-plowed 
hardscrabble, the sight was well worth the 
rough climb. The broad Ohio bottom, op- 
posite, was thick-dotted with orchard clumps, 
from which rose the white houses and barns 
of small tillers. On the generous slopes of 
the Kentucky hills, all corrugated with wooded 
ravines, were scores of fertile farmsteads, 
each with its ample tobacco shed — the bet- 
ter class of farmers on the hilltops, their 
buildings often silhouetted against the western 
sky, and the meaner sort down low on the 
river's bank. Through this pastoral scene, 
the broad river winds with noble sweep, until, 
both above and below, it loses itself in the 
purple mist of the distant hills. 

We are now upon the Great Bend of the 



Kaleidoscopic Vistas 173 

Ohio, beginning at Neville (435 miles) and 
ending at Harris's Landing (519 miles), with 
North Bend (482 miles) at the apex. The 
bend is itself a series of convolutions, and our 
point of view is ever changing, so that we 
have kaleidoscopic vistas, — and with each new 
setting, good-humoredly dispute with each 
other, we at the oars, and the others in the 
stern-sheets, as to which is the more beautiful, 
the unfolding or the dissolving view. 

Our camp to-night is beside a little hillside 
torrent on the lower edge of Point Pleasant. 
We are well up on the rocky slope; an aban- 
doned stone-quarry lies back of us, up the hill 
a bit; and leading into the village, half a mile 
away, is a picturesque country road, overhung 
with sumacs and honey locusts — overtopped 
on one side by a precipitous pasture, and on 
the other dropping suddenly to a beach thick- 
grown to willows, maples, and scrub syca- 
mores. 

The Boy and I made an expedition into the 
town, for milk and water, but were obliged to 
climb one of the sharpest ascents hereabout, 
before our search was rewarded. A pretty 
little farmstead it is, up there on the lofty hill 
above us, with a wealth of chickens and an 



174 On the Storied Ohio 

ample dairy, and fat fields and woods gently 
sloping backward into the interior. The good 
farm-wife was surprised that I was willing to 
"pack" commodities, so plentiful with her, 
down so steep a path; but canoeing pilgrims 
must not falter at trifles such as this. 

Point Pleasant is the birthplace of General 
Grant. Not every hamlet has its hero, here- 
about. Everyone we met this evening, — 
seeing we were strangers, the Boy and I, — told 
us of this halo which crowns their home. 

Cincinnati, Thursday, May 24th. — During 
the night there were frequent heavy downpours, 
during which the swollen torrent by our side 
roared among its boulders right lustily; and 
occasionally a heavy farm-wagon crossed the 
country bridge which spans the ravine just 
above us, its rumblings echoing in the quarried 
glen for all the world like distant thunder. 
Before turning in, each built a cairn upon the 
beach, at the point which he thought the 
water might reach by morning. The Boy, 
more venturesome than the rest, piled his 
cairn highest up the slope; and when daylight 
revealed the fact that the river, in its four-feet 
rise, had crept nearest his goal, there was 
much juvenile rejoicing. 



The River Rising 175 

There is a gray sky, this morning. With a 
cold headwind on the starboard quarter, we 
hug the lee of the Ohio shore. The river is 
well up in the willows now. Crowding Pil- 
grim as closely as we may, within the narrow 
belt of unruffled water, our oars are swept by 
their bending boughs, which lightly tremble 
on the surface of the flood. The numerous 
rock-cumbered ravines, coursing down the 
hills or through the bottom lands, a few days 
since held but slender streams, or were, the 
most of them, wholly dry; but now they are 
brimming with noisy currents all flecked with 
foam — pretty pictures, these yawning gullies, 
overhung with cottonwoods and sycamores, 
with thick undergrowth of green-brier and 
wild columbine, and the yellow buds of the 
celandine poppy. 

The hills are showing better cultivation, as 
we approach the great city. The farm-houses 
are in better style, the market gardens larger, 
prosperity more evident. Among the pleasing 
sights are frequent farmsteads at the summits 
of the slopes, with orchards and vineyards, and 
gardens and fields, stretching down almost to 
the river — quite, indeed, on the Ohio side, but in 
Kentucky flanked at the base by the railway 



176 On the Storied Ohio 

terrace. Numerous ferries connect the Ken- 
tucky railway stations with the eastern bank; 
one, which we saw just above New Richmond, 
O. (446 miles), was run by horse power, a 
weary nag in a tread-mill above each side- 
paddle. Although Kentucky has the railway, 
there is just here apparent a greater degree of 
thrift in Ohio — the towns more numerous, 
fields and truck-gardens more ample, on the 
whole a better class of farm-houses, and fre- 
quently, along the country road which closely 
skirts the shore, comfortable little broad-bal- 
conied inns, dependent on the trade of fishing 
and outing parties. 

Just below the Newport waterworks are 
several coal-barge harbors — mooring-grounds 
where barges lie in waiting, until hauled off 
by tugs to the storage wharves. In the rear 
of one of these fleets, at the base of a market 
garden, we found a sunny nook for lunch — for 
here on the Kentucky side the cold wind has 
full sweep, and we are glad of shelter when at 
rest. Across the river is a broad, low bottom 
given up to market gardeners, who jealously 
cultivate down to the water's edge, leaving the 
merest fringe of willows to protect their do- 
main. At the foot of this fertile plain, the 



Cincinnati 177 

Little Miami River (460 miles) pours its muddy 
contribution into the Ohio; and beyond this 
rises the amphitheater of hills on which Cin- 
cinnati (466 miles) is mainly built. We see 
but the outskirts here, for two miles below us 
there is a sharp bend in the river, and only a 
dark pall of smoke marks where the city lies. 
But these outlying slopes are well dotted with 
gray and white groups of settlement, separated 
by stretches of woodland over which play 
changing lights, for cloud masses are sweeping 
the Ohio hills while we are still basking in 
the sun. 

Above us, crowning the Kentucky ascents, 
or nestled on their wooded shoulders, are many 
beautiful villas, evidently the homes of the 
ultra-wealthy. Close at hand we have the 
pleasant chink-chink of caulking hammers, for 
barges are built and repaired in this snug har- 
bor. Now and then a river tug comes, with 
noisy bluster of smoke and steam, and amid 
much tightening and slackening of rope, and 
wild profanity, takes captive a laden barge, — 
as a cowboy might a refractory steer in the 
midst of a herd, — and hauls it off to be dis- 
gorged down stream. And just as we conclude 
our lunch, German women come with hoes to 



178 On the Storied Ohio 

practice the gentle art of horticulture — a char- 
acteristic conglomeration, in the heart of our 
busy West; the millionaire on the hill-top, the 
tiller on the slope, shipwright on the beach, 
and grimy Commerce master of the flood. 

Setting afloat on a boiling current, thick 
with driftwood, we soon were coursing be- 
tween city-lined shores — on the Kentucky 
side, Newport and Covington, respectively 
above and below Licking River; and in an 
hour were making our way through the laby- 
rinth of steamers thickly moored with their 
noses to land, and cautiously creeping around 
to a quiet spot at the stern of a giant wharf- 
boat — no slight task this, with the river ' ' on 
the jump," and a false move liable to swamp 
us if we strike an obstruction at full gait. No 
doubt we all breathed freer when Pilgrim, too, 
was beached, — although it be only confessed 
in the privacy of the log. With her and her 
cargo safely stored in the wharf-boat, we 
sought a hotel, and, regaining our bag of 
clothing, — shipped ahead of us from McKee's 
Rocks, — donned urban attire for an inspection 
of the city. 

And a noble city it is, that has grown out 
of the two block-houses which George Rogers 



Losantiville 1 79 

Clark planted here in 1780, on his raid against 
the Indians of Chillicothe. In 1788, John 
Cleves Symmes, the first United States judge 
of the Northwest Territory, purchased from 
Congress a million acres of land, lying on the 
Ohio between the two Miami Rivers. Mat- 
thias Denman bought from him a square mile 
at the eastern end of the grant, "ona most 
delightful high bank" opposite the Licking, 
and — on a cash valuation for the land, of two 
hundred dollars — took in with him as partners 
Robert Patterson and John Filson. Filson 
was a schoolmaster, had written the first his- 
tory of Kentucky, and seems to have enjoyed 
much local distinction. To him was entrusted 
the task of inventing a name for the settle- 
ment which the company proposed to plant 
here. The outcome was "Losantiville," a 
pedagogical hash of Greek, Latin, and French: 
L, for Licking; os, mouth; anti, opposite; 
vilie, city — Licking-opposite-City, or City-op- 
posite-Licking, whichever is preferred. This 
was in August. The Fates work quickly, for 
in October poor Filson was scalped by the 
Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Miami, 
before a settler had yet been enticed to Lo- 
santiville. But the survivors knew how to 



180 On the Storied Ohio 

"boom" a town; lots were given away by 
lottery to intending actual settlers; and in a 
few months Symmes was able to write that 
"It populates considerably." 

A few weeks previous to the planting of 
Losantiville, a party of men from Redstone 
had settled Columbia, at the mouth of the 
Little Miami, about where the suburb of Cal- 
ifornia now is; and, a few weeks later, a third 
colony was started by Symmes himself at 
North Bend, near the Big Miami, at the west- 
ern extremity of his grant; and this, the 
judge wished to make the capital of the new 
Northwest Territory. At first, it was a race 
between these three colonies. A few miles 
below North Bend, Fort Finney had been 
built in 1785-86, hence the Bend had at first 
the start; but a high flood dampened its pros- 
pects, the troops were withdrawn from this 
neighborhood to Louisville, and in the winter 
of 1789-90 Fort Washington was built at Lo- 
santiville by General Harmar. The neighbor- 
hood of the new fortress became, in the ensu- 
ing Indian war, the center of the district. 

To Losantiville, with its fort, came Arthur 
St. Clair, the new governor of the Northwest 
Territory (January, 1790); and, making his 
headquarters here, laid violent hands on Fil- 



Mad Anthony Wayne 1 8 1 

son's invention, at once changing the name 
to Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the 
Cincinnati, of which the new official was a 
prominent member — "so that," Symmes sor- 
rowfully writes, " Losantiville will become 
extinct." Five years of Indian campaigning 
followed, the features of which were the crush- 
ing defeats of Harmar and St. Clair, and the 
final victory of Mad Anthony Wayne at Fallen 
Timbers. It was not until the Treaty of 
Greenville (1795), the result of Wayne's bril- 
liant dash into the wilderness, that the Rev- 
olutionary War may properly be said to have 
ended in the West. 

Those were stirring times on the Ohio, both 
ashore and afloat; but, amidst them all, Cin- 
cinnati grew apace. Ellicott, in 1796, speaks 
of it as k4 a very respectable place," and in 
1 8 14 Flint found it the only port that could 
be called a town, from Steubenville to Nat- 
chez, a distance of fifteen hundred miles; in 
1825 he reports it greatly grown, and crowded 
with immigrants from Europe and from our 
own Eastern states. The impetus thus early 
gained has never lessened, and Cincinnati is 
to-day one of the best built and most substan- 
tial cities in the Union. 



CHAPTER XV. 

The story of North Bend — The ' ' shakes" — 
Driftwood — Rabbit Hash — A side-trip 
to Big Bone Lick. 

Near Petersburg, Ky., Friday, May 

25th. — This morning, an hour before noon, as 

we looked upon the river from the top of the 

Cincinnati wharf, a wild scene presented itself. 

The shore up and down, as far as could be 

seen, was densely lined with packets and 

freighters; beyond them, the great stream, 

here half a mile wide, was rushing past like a 

mill-race, and black with all manner of drift, 

some of it formed into great rafts from each of 

which sprawled a network of huge branches. 

Had we been strangers to this offscouring of a 

thousand miles of beach, swirling past us at a 

six-mile gait, we might well have doubted the 

prudence of launching little Pilgrim upon such 

a sea. But for two days past we had been 

amidst something of the sort, and knew that 

to cautious canoeists it was less dangerous 

than it appeared. 

182 



Among the Drift 183 

A strong head wind, meeting this surging 
tide, is lashing it into a white-capped fury. 
But lying to with paddle and oars, and dodging 
ferries and towing-tugs as best we may, Pilgrim 
bears us swiftly past the long line of steamers 
at the wharf, past Newport and Covington, 
and the insignificant Licking,* and out under 
great railway bridges which cobweb the sky. 
Soon Cincinnati, shrouded in smoke, has dis- 
appeared around the bend, and we are in the 
fast-thinning suburbs — homes of beer-gardens 
and excursion barges, havens for freight-flats, 
and villas of low and high degree. 

When we are out here in the swim, the 
drift-strewn stream has a more peaceful aspect 
than when looked at from the shore. Instead 
of rushing past as if dooming to destruction 
everything else afloat, the debris falls behind, 
when we row, for our progress is then the 
greater. Dropping our oars, our gruesome 
companions on the river pass us slowly, for 
they catch less wind than we; and then, so 
silent the steady march of all, we seem to be 
drifting up-stream, until on glancing at the 
shore the hills appear to be swiftly going down 

*So called from the Big Buffalo Lick, upon its banks. 



184 On the Storied Ohio. 

and the willow fringes up, — until the sight 
makes us dizzy, and we are content to be at 
quits with these optical delusions. 

We no longer have the beach of gravel or 
sand, or strip of clay knee-deep in mud. The 
water, now twelve feet higher than before the 
rise, has covered all; it is, indeed, swaying the 
branches of sycamores and willows, and meet- 
ing the edges of the corn-fields of venturesome 
farmers who have cultivated far down, taking 
the risk of a "June fresh." Often could we, 
if we wished, row quite within the bulwark of 
willows, where a week ago we would have 
ventured to camp. 

The Kentucky side, to-day, from Covington 
out, has been thoroughly rustic, seldom broken 
by settlement; while Ohio has given us a suc- 
cession of suburban towns all the way out to 
North Bend (482 miles), which is a small man- 
ufacturing place, lying on a narrow bottom at 
the base of a convolution of gentle, wooded 
hills. One sees that Cincinnati has a better 
and a broader base; North Bend was handi- 
capped by nature, in its early race. 

When Ohio came into the Union (1803), it 
was specified that the boundary between her 
and Indiana should be a line running due 



Visiting Crackers 185 

north from the mouth of the Big Miami. But 
the latter, an erratic stream, frequently the 
victim of floods, comes wriggling down to the 
Ohio through a broad bottom grown thick to 
willows, and in times of high water its mouth 
is a changeable locality. The boundary mon- 
ument is planted on the meridian of what was 
the mouth, ninety-odd years ago; but to-day 
the Miami breaks through an opening in the 
quivering line of willow forest, a hundred yards 
eastward (487 miles). 

Garrison Creek is a modest Kentucky afflu- 
ent, just above the Miami's mouth. At the 
point, a group of rustics sat on a log at the 
bank-top, watching us approach. Landing in 
search of milk and water, I was taken by one 
of them in a lumbersome skiff a short distance 
up the creek, and presented to his family. 
They are genuine " crackers," of the coarsest 
type — tall, lean, sallow, fishy-eyed, with tow- 
colored hair, an ungainly gait, barefooted, and 
in nondescript clothing all patches and tatters. 
The tousle-headed woman, surrounded by her 
copies in miniature, keeps the milk neatly, in 
an outer dairy, perhaps because of market 
requirements; but in the crazy old log-house, 
pigs and chickens are free comers, and the 



1 86 On the Storied Ohio 

cistern from which they drink is foul. Here 
in this damp, low pocket of a bottom, annually 
flooded to the door-sill, in the midst of veg- 
etation of the rankest order, and quite un- 
heedful of the simplest of sanitary laws, these 
yellow-skinned " crackers" are cradled, wed- 
ded, and biered. And there are thousands 
like unto them, for we are now in the heart of 
the " shake" country, and shall hear enough 
of the plague through the remainder of our 
pilgrimage. As for ourselves, we fear not, for 
it is not until autumn that danger is imminent, 
and we are taking due precaution under the 
Doctor's guidance. 

Two miles beyond, is the Indiana town of 
Lawrenceburg, with the unkempt aspect so 
common to the small river places; and two 
miles still farther, on a Kentucky bottom, 
Petersburg, whose chiefest building, as viewed 
from the stream, is a huge distillery. On a 
high sandy terrace, a mile or so below, we 
pitch our nightly camp. All about are wil- 
lows, rustling musically in the evening breeze, 
and, soaring far aloft, the now familiar syca- 
mores. Nearly opposite, in Indiana, the little 
city of Aurora is sparkling with points of light, 
strains of dance music reach us over the way, 



Lost in the Fog 187 

and occasional shouts and gay laughter; while 
now and then, in the thickening dusk of the 
long day, we hear skiffs go chucking by from 
Petersburg way, and the gleeful voices of men 
and women doubtless being ferried to the ball. 

Near Warsaw, Ky., Saturday, May 26th. — 
Our first mosquito appeared last night, but he 
was easily slaughtered. It has been a com- 
fort to be free, thus far, from these pests of 
camp life. We had prepared for them by 
laying in a bolt of black tarlatan at Wheel- 
ing, — greatly superior this, to ordinary white 
mosquito bar, — but thus far it has remained 
in the shopman's wrapper. 

The fog this morning was of the heaviest. 
At 4 o'clock we were awakened by the sharp 
clanging of a pilot's signal bell, and there, 
poking her nose in among our willows, a dozen 
feet from the tent, was the ''Big Sandy," one 
of the St. Louis & Cincinnati packet line. 
She had evidently lost her bearings in the 
mist; but with a deal of ringing, and a noisy 
churning of the water by the reversed paddle- 
wheel, pulled out and disappeared into the 
gloom. 

The river, still rising, is sweeping down an 



1 88 On the Storied Ohio 

ever-increasing body of rubbish. Islands and 
beaches, away back to the Alleghanies on the 
main stream, and on thousands of miles of 
affluents, are yielding up those vast rafts of 
drift-wood and fallen timber, which have con- 
tinually impressed us on our way with a 
sense of the enormous wastage everywhere in 
progress — necessary, of course, in view of the 
prohibitive cost of transportation. Neverthe- 
less, one thinks pitifully of the tens of thou- 
sands who, in congested districts, each winter 
suffer unto death for want of fuel; and here is 
this wealth of forest debris, the useless play- 
thing of the river. But not only wreckage of 
this character is borne upon the flood. The 
thievish river has picked up valuable saw-logs 
that have run astray, lumber of many sorts, 
boxes, barrels — and now and then the body of 
a cow or horse that has tumbled to its death 
from some treacherous clay-cliff or rocky ter- 
race. The beaches have been swept clean by 
the rushing flood, of whatever lay upon them, 
be it good or bad, for the great scavenger ex- 
ercises no discretion. 

The bulk of the matter now follows the 
current in an almost solid raft, as it caroms 
from shore to shore. Having swift water 



Rabbit Hash 189 

everywhere at this stage, for the most part we 
avoid entangling Pilgrim in the procession, 
but row upon the outskirts, interested in the 
curious medley, and observant of the many 
birds which perch upon the branches of the 
floating trees and sing blithely on their way. 
The current bears hard upon the Aurora 
beach, and townsfolk by scores are out in 
skiffs or are standing by the water's edge, en- 
gaged with boat-hooks in spearing choice 
morsels from the debris rushing by their 
door — heaping it upon the shore to dry, or 
gathering it in little rafts which they moor 
to the bank. It is a busy scene; the wreckers, 
men, women, and children alike, are so en- 
gaged in their grab-bag game that they have 
no eyes for us; unobserved, we watch them 
at close range, and speculate upon their re- 
spective chances. 

Rabbit Hash, Ky. (502 miles), is a crude 
hamlet of a hundred souls, lying nestled in a 
green amphitheater. A horse-power ferry runs 
over to the larger village of Rising Sun, its 
Indiana neighbor. There is a small general 
store in Rabbit Hash, with postomce and 
paint-shop attachment, and near by a tobacco 
warehouse and a blacksmith shop, with a few 



190 On the Storied Ohio 

cottages scattered at intervals over the bot- 
tom. The postmaster, who is" also the store- 
keeper and painter, greeted me with joy, as 
I deposited with him mail-matter bearing 
eighteen cents' worth of stamps; for his is one 
of those offices where the salary is the value 
of the stamps cancelled. It is not every day 
that so liberal a patron comes along. 

"Jemimi! Bill! but guv'm'nt business 's 
look'n' up — there'll be some o' th' rest o' us 
a-want'n' this yere off'c', a'ter nex' 'lection, I 
reck'n'." 

It was the blacksmith, who is also the ferry- 
man, who thus bantered the delighted post- 
master, — a broad-faced, big-chested, brown- 
armed man, with his neck-muscles standing 
out like cords, and his mild blue eyes dancing 
with fun, this rustic disciple of Tubal Cain. 
He sat just without the door, leather apron on, 
and his red shirt-sleeves rolled up, playing 
checkers on an upturned soap-box, with a jolly 
fat farmer from the hill-country, whose broad 
straw hat was cocked on the back of his bald 
head. The merry laughter of the two was in- 
fectious. The half-dozen spectators, small 
farmers whose teams and saddle-horses were 
hitched to the postoffice railing, were them- 



Checkers 191 

selves hilarious over the game; and a saffron- 
skinned, hollow-cheeked woman in a blue sun- 
bonnet, and with a market-basket over her arm, 
stopped for a moment at the threshold to look 
on, and then passed within the store, her 
eyes having caught the merriment, although 
her facial muscles had apparently lost their 
power of smiling. 

Joining the little company, I found that the 
farmer was a blundering player, but made up 
in fun what he lacked in science. I tried to 
ascertain the origin of the name Rabbit Hash, 
as applied to the hamlet. Every one had a 
different opinion, evidently invented on the 
spur of the moment, but all " 'lowed" that 
none but the tobacco agent could tell, and he 
was off in the country for the day; as for them- 
selves, they had, they confessed, never thought 
of it before. It always had been Rabbit Hash, 
and like enough would be to the end of time. 

We are on the lookout for Big Bone Creek, 
wishing to make a side trip to the famous Big 
Bone Lick, but among the many openings 
through the willows of the Kentucky shore we 
may well miss it, hence make constant inquiry 
as we proceed. There was a houseboat in 
the mouth of one goodly affluent. As we hove 



192 On the Storied Ohio 

in sight, a fat woman, whose gunny-sack apron 
was her chief attire, hurried up the gang-plank 
and disappeared within. 

"Hello, the boat!" one of us hailed. 

The woman's fuzzy head appeared at the 
window. 

"What creek is this?" 

" Gunpowder, I reck'n!" — in a deep, man- 
like voice. 

"How far below is Big Bone?" 

"Jist a piece!" 

"How many miles?" 

"Two, I reck'n." 

Big Bone Creek (512 miles), some fifty or 
sixty feet wide at the mouth, opens through a 
willow patch, between pretty, sloping hills. 
A houseboat lay just within — a favorite situa- 
tion for them, these creek mouths, for here 
they are undisturbed by steamer wakes, and 
the fishing is usually good. The proprietor, a 
rather distinguished-looking mulatto, despite 
his old clothes and plantation straw-hat, was 
sitting in a chair at his cabin door, angling; 
his white wife was leaning over him lovingly, 
as we shot into the scene, but at once with- 
drew inside. This man, with his side-whiskers 
and fine air, may have been a head-waiter or 



Big Bone Creek 193 

a dance-fiddler in better days; but his soft, 
plaintive voice, and hacking cough, bespoke 
the invalid. He told us what he knew about 
the creek, which was little enough, as he had 
but recently come to these parts. 

At an ordinary stage in the Ohio, the Big 
Bone cannot be ascended in a skiff for more 
than half a mile; now, upon the backset, we 
are able to proceed for two miles, leaving but 
another two miles of walking to the Lick itself. 
The creek curves gracefully around the bases 
of the sugar-loaf hills of the interior. Under 
the swaying arch of willows, and of ragged, 
sprawling sycamores, their bark all patched 
with green and gray and buff and white, we 
have charming vistas — the quiet water, thick 
grown with aquatic plants; the winding banks, 
bearing green-dragons and many another flower 
loving damp shade; the frequent rocky pal- 
isades, oozing with springs; and great blue 
herons, stretching their long necks in wonder, 
and then setting off with a stately flight which 
reminds one of the cranes on Japanese ware. 
Through the dense fringe of vegetation, we 
have occasional glimpses of the hillside farms — 
their sloping fields sprinkled with stones, their 
often barren pastures, numerous abandoned 
13 



194 On the Storied Ohio 

tracts overgrown with weeds, and blue-grass 
lush in the meadows. Along the edges of 
the Creek, and in little pocket bottoms, the 
varied vegetation has a sub-tropical luxuriance, 
and in this now close, warm air, there is a rank 
smell suggestive of malaria. 

These bottoms are annually overflowed, so 
that the crude little farmsteads are on the 
rising ground — whitewashed cabins, many of 
them of logs, serve as houses; for stock, there 
are the veriest shanties, affording practically 
no shelter; best of all, the rude tobacco-dry- 
ing sheds, in many of which some of last year's 
crop can still be seen, hanging on the strips. 
We are out of the world, here; and barefooted 
men and boys, who with listless air are fishing 
from the banks, gaze at us in dull wonder as 
we thread our tortuous way. 

Finally, we learned that we could with profit 
go no higher. Before us were two miles of 
what was described as the roughest sort of hill 
road, and the afternoon sun was powerful; so 
W — accepted the invitation of a rustic fisher- 
man to rest with his "women folks" in a little 
cabin up the hill a bit. Seeing her safely 
housed with the good-natured ' ' cracker " farm- 
wife, the Doctor, the Boy, and I trudged off 



Big Bone Lick 195 

toward Big Bone Lick. The waxy clay of the 
roadbed had recently been wetted by a shower; 
the walking, consequently, was none of the 
best. But we were repaid with charming 
views of hill and vale, a softly-rolling scene 
dotted with little gray and brown fields, clumps 
of woodland, rail-fenced pastures, and cabins 
of the crudest sort — for in the autumn-tide, 
the curse of malaria haunts the basin of the 
Big Bone, and none but he of fortune spurned 
would care here in this beauty-spot to plant 
his vine and fig-tree. Now and then our path 
leads us across the winding creek, which in 
these upper reaches tumbles noisily over ledges 
of jagged rock, above which luxuriant syca- 
mores, and elms, and maples arch gracefully. 
At each picturesque fording-place, with its 
inevitable watering-pool, are stepping-stones 
for foot pilgrims; often a flock of geese are 
sailing in the pool, with craned necks and 
flapping wings hissing defiance to disturbers 
of their sylvan peace. 

The travelers we meet are on horseback — 
most of them the yellow-skinned, hollow- 
cheeked folk, with lack-luster eyes, whom we 
note in the cabin doors, or dawdling about 
their daily routine. On nearing the Lick, 



196 On the Storied Ohio 

two young horsewomen, out of the common, 
look interestedly at us, and I stop to inquire 
the way, although the village spire is peering 
above the tree-tops yonder. Pretty, buxom, 
sweet-faced lassies, these, with soft, pleasant 
voices, each with her market-basket over her 
arm, going homeward from shopping. It 
would be interesting to know their story — 
what it is that brings these daughters of a 
brighter world here into this valley of the liv- 
ing death. 

Two hundred yards farther, where the road 
forks, and the one at the right hand ascends 
to the small hamlet of Big Bone Lick, there is 
an interesting picture beneath the way-post: a 
girl in a blue calico gown, her face deep hidden 
in her red sunbonnet, sits upon a chestnut 
mount, with a laden market-basket before her; 
while by her side, astride a coal-black pony, 
which fretfully paws to be on his way, is a 
roughly dressed youth, his face shaded by a 
broad slouched hat of the cowboy order. 
They have evidently met there by appoint- 
ment, and are so earnestly conversing — she 
with her hand resting lovingly, perhaps dep- 
recatingly, upon his bridle-arm, and his free 
hand nervously stroking her horse's mane, 



The Mammoth 197 

while his eyes are far afield — that they do not 
observe us as we pass; and we are free to 
weave from the incident any sort of cracker 
romance which fancy may dictate. 

The source of Big Bone Creek is a marshy 
basin some fifty acres in extent, rimmed with 
gently-sloping hills, and freely pitted with 
copious springs of a water strongly sulphurous 
in taste, with a suggestion of salt. The odor 
is so powerful as to be all-pervading, a quarter 
of a mile away, and to be readily detected at 
twice that distance. This collection of springs 
constitutes Big Bone Lick, probably the most 
famous of the many similar licks in Kentucky, 
Indiana, and Illinois. 

The salt licks of the Ohio basin were from 
the earliest times resorted to in great numbers 
by wild beasts, and were favorite camping- 
grounds for Indians, and for white hunters 
and explorers. This one was first visited by 
the French as early as 1729, and became 
famous because of the great quantities of re- 
mains of animals which lay all over the marsh, 
particularly noticeable being the gigantic bones 
of the extinct mammoth — hence the name 
adopted by the earliest American hunters, 
' 'Big Bone." These monsters had evidently 



198 On the Storied Ohio 

been mired in the swamp, while seeking to 
lick the salty mud, and died in their tracks. 
Pioneer chronicles abound in references to the 
Lick, and we read frequently of hunting-par- 
ties using the ribs of the mammoth for tent 
poles, and sections of the vertebrae as camp 
stools and tables. But in our own day, there 
are no surface evidences of this once rich 
treasure of giant fossils; although occasionally 
a ' ' find " is made by enterprising excavators, — 
several bones having thus been unearthed only 
a week ago. They are now on exhibition in 
the neighboring village, preparatory to being 
shipped to an Eastern museum. 

As we hurried back over the rolling highway, 
thunder-clouds grandly rose out of the west, 
and great drops of rain gave us moist warning 
of the coming storm. W — was watching us 
from the cabin door, as we made the last 
turning in the road, and, accompanied by the 
farm-wife and her two daughters, came trip- 
ping down to the landing. She had been 
entertained in the one down-stairs room, as 
royally as these honest cracker women-folk 
knew how; seated in the family rocking-chair, 
she had heard in those two hours the social 
gossip of a wide neighborhood; learned, too, 



Skiffing for Pleasure 199 

that the cold, wet weather of the last fort- 
night had killed turkey-chicks and goslings by 
the score; heard of the damage being done to 
corn and tobacco, by the prevalent high water; 
was told how Bess and Brindle fared, off in 
the rocky pasture which yields little else than 
mulleins; and how far back Towser had to go, 
to claim relationship to a collie. "And 
weren't we really show-people, going down 
the river this way, in a skiff? or, if we weren't 
show-people, had we an agency for something? 
or, were we only in trade?" It seems a diffi- 
cult task to make these people on the bottoms 
believe that we are skiffing it for pleasure — it 
is a sort of pleasure so far removed from their 
notions of the fitness of things; and so at last 
we have given up trying, and let them think 
of our pilgrimage what they will. 

The entire family now assembled on the 
muddy bank, and bade us a really affectionate 
farewell, as if we had been, in this isolated 
corner of the world, most welcome guests who 
were going all too soon. In a few strokes 
of the oars we were rounding the bend; and 
waving our hands at the little knot of watch- 
ers, went forth from their lives, doubtless 
forever. 



200 On the Storied Ohio 

The storm soon burst upon us in full fury. 
Clad in rubber, we rested under giant trees, or 
beneath projecting rock ledges, taking advan- 
tage of occasional lulls to push on for a few 
rods to some new shelter. The numerous 
little hillside runs which, in our journey up, 
were but dry gullies choked with leaves and 
boulders, were now brimming with muddy tor- 
rents, rushing all foam-flecked and with deaf- 
ening roar into the central stream. At last 
the cloud curtain rolled away, the sun gushed 
out with fiery rays, the arch of foliage sparkled 
with splendor — in meadow and on hillside, the 
face of Nature was cleanly beautiful. 

At the creek mouth, the distinguished mu- 
latto still was fishing from his chair, and stand- 
ing by his side was his wife throwing a spoon. 
They nodded to us pleasantly, as old friends 
returned. Gliding by their boat, Pilgrim was 
soon once more in the full current of the swift- 
flowing Ohio. 

We are high up to-night, on a little grass 
terrace in Kentucky, two miles above Warsaw. 
The usual country road lies back of us, a rod 
or two, and then a slender field surmounted 
by a woodland hill. Fortune favors us, almost 



Perched High 201 

nightly, with seemly abiding-places. In no 
shelter could we sleep more comfortably than 
in our cotton home. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

New Switzerland — An old-time river 
pilot — Houseboat life, on the lower 

reaches a philosopher in rags wood- 

ed solitudes arrival at louisville. 

Near Madison, Ind., Sunday, May 27th. — 
At supper last night, a houseboat fisherman, 
going by in his skiff, parted the willows fring- 
ing our beach, and offered to sell us some of 
his wares. We bought from him a two-pound 
catfish, which he tethered to a bush overhang- 
ing the water, until we were ready to dress it; 
giving us warning, that meanwhile it would be 
best to have an eye on our purchase, or the 
turtles would devour it. Hungry thieves, these 
turtles, the fisherman said; you could leave 
nothing edible in water or on land, unpro- 
tected, without constant fear of the reptiles — 
which reminds me that yesterday the Doctor 
and the Boy found on the beach a beautiful 
box tortoise. 

Our fish was swimming around finely, at 
202 



Licensed Houseboats 203 

the end of his cord, when the executioner ar- 
rived, and when finally hung up in a tree was 
safe from the marauders. This morning the 
fisherman was around again, hoping to obtain 
another dime from the commissariat; but 
though we had breakfasted creditably from 
the little ''cat," we had no thought of stock- 
ing our larder with his kind. So the grizzly 
man of nets took a fresh chew of tobacco, and 
sat a while in his boat, "pass'n' th' time o' 
day" with us, punctuating his remarks with 
frequent expectorations. 

The new Kentucky houseboat law taxes each 
craft of this sort seven-and-a-half dollars, he 
said: five dollars going to the State, and the 
remainder to the collector. There was to be 
a patrol boat, "to see that th' fellers done 
step to th' cap'n's office an' settle." But the 
houseboaters were going to combine and fight 
the law on constitutional grounds, for they had 
been told that it was clearly an interference 
with commerce on a national highway. As 
for the houseboaters voting — well, some of 
them did, but the most of them didn't. The 
Indiana registry law requires a six months' 
residence, and in Kentucky it is a full year, so 
that a houseboat man who moves about any, 



204 On the Storied Ohio 

" jes' isn't in it, sir, thet's all." However, our 
visitor was not much disturbed over the prac- 
tical disfranchisement of his class — it seemed, 
rather, to amuse him; he was much more con- 
cerned in the new tax, which he thought an 
outrageous imposition. In bidding us a cheery 
good-bye, he noticed my camera. "Yees be 
one o' them photygraph parties, hey?" and 
laughed knowingly, as though he had caught 
me in a familiar trick. No child of nature so 
simple, in these days, as not to recognize a 
kodak. 

Warsaw, Ky. (524 miles), just below, has 
some bankside evidences of manufacturing, but 
on the whole is rather down at the heel. A 
contrast this, to Vevay (533 miles), on the 
Indiana shore, which, though a small town on 
a low-lying bottom, is neat and apparently 
prosperous. Vevay was settled in 1803, by 
John James Dufour and several associates, 
from the District of Vevay, in Switzerland, 
who purchased from Congress four square 
miles hereabout, and, christening it New Swit- 
zerland, sought to establish extensive vineyards 
in the heart of this middle West. The Swiss 
prospered. The colony has had sufficient vi- 
tality to preserve many of its original charac- 



A Notable Pilot 205 

teristics unto the present day. Much of the 
land in the neighborhood is still owned by the 
descendants of Dufour and his fellows, but the 
vineyards are not much in evidence. In fact, 
the grape-growing industry on the banks of 
the Ohio, although commenced at different 
points with great promise, by French, Swiss, 
Germans, and Americans alike, has not real- 
ized their expectations. The Ohio has proved 
to be unlike the Rhine in this respect. In the 
long run, the vine in America appears to fare 
better in a more northern latitude. 

Three miles above Vevay, near Plum Creek, 
I was interested in the Indiana farm upon 
which Heathcoat Picket settled in 1795 — some 
say in 1790. In his day, Picket was a notable 
flatboat pilot. He was credited with having 
conducted more craft down the river to New Or- 
leans, than any other man of his time — going 
down on the boat, and returning on foot. It is 
said that he made over twenty trips of this char- 
acter, which is certainly a marvelous record at a 
time when there were only Indian trails through 
the more than a thousand miles of dense forest 
between Vevay and New Orleans, and when a 
savage enemy might be expected to lurk be- 
hind any tree, ready to slay the rash pale-face. 



206 On the Storied Ohio 

Picket's must have been a life of continuous 
adventure, as thrilling as the career of Daniel 
Boone himself; yet he is now known to but a 
local antiquarian or two, and one stumbles 
across him only in foot-notes. The border 
annals of the West abound with incidents as 
romantic as any which have been applauded 
by men. Daniel Boone is not the only hero 
of the frontier; he is not even the chief hero, — 
he is but a type, whom an accident of litera- 
ture has made conspicuous. 

The Kentucky River (541 miles) enters at 
Carrollton, Ky. , — a well-to-do town, with 
busy-looking wharves upon both streams, — 
through a wide and rather uninteresting bot- 
tom. But, over beyond this, one sees that it 
has come down through a deep-cut valley, 
rimmed with dark, rolling hills, which speak 
eloquently of a diversified landscape along its 
banks. The Indian Kentucky, a small stream 
but half-a-dozen rods wide, enters from the 
north, five miles below — "Injun Kaintuck," it 
was called by a jovial junk-boat man stationed 
at the mouth of the tributary. There are, on 
the Ohio, several examples of this peculiar 
nomenclature: a river enters from the south, 
and another affluent coming in from the north, 



Houseboat Life 207 

nearly opposite, will have the same name with 
the prefix l * Indian." The reason is obvious; 
the land north of the Ohio remained Indian 
territory many years after Kentucky and Vir- 
ginia were recognized as white man's country, 
hence the convenient distinction — the river 
coming in from the north, near the Kentucky, 
for instance, became "Indian Kentucky," and 
so on through the list. 

Houseboats are less frequent, in these 
reaches of the river. The towns are fewer 
and smaller than above; consequently there 
is less demand for fish, or for desultory labor. 
Yet we seldom pass a day, in the most rustic 
sections, without seeing from half-a-dozen to 
a dozen of these craft. Sometimes they are 
a few rods up the mouths of tributaries, half 
hidden by willows and overhanging sycamores; 
again, in picturesque openings of the willow 
fringe along the main shore ; or, boldly planted 
at the base of some rocky ledge. At the 
towns, they are variously situated: in the 
water, up the beach a way, or high upon the 
bottom, whither some great flood has carried 
them in years gone by. Occasionally, when 
high and dry upon the land, they have a bit 
of vegetable garden about them, rented for a 



208 On the Storied Ohio 

time from the farmer; but, even with the 
floaters, chickens are commonly kept, gener- 
ally in a coop on the roof, connected with the 
shore by a special gang-plank for the fowls; 
and the other day, we saw a thrifty house- 
boater who had several colonies of bees. 

There was a rise of only two feet, last night; 
evidently the flood is nearly at its greatest. 
We are now twenty feet above the level of ten 
days ago, and are frequently swirling along 
over what were then sharp, stony slopes, and 
brushing the topmost boughs of the lower 
lines of willows and scrub sycamores. Thus 
we have a better view of the country; and, 
approaching closely to the banks, can from 
our seats at any time pluck blue lupine by the 
armful. It thrives mightily on these grav- 
elled shores, and so do the bignonia vine, the 
poison ivy, and the Virginia creeper. The 
hills are steeper, now, especially in Indiana; 
many of them, although stony, worked-out, 
and almost worthless, are still, in patches, 
cultivated to the very top; but for the most 
part they are clothed in restful green. Over- 
head, in the summer haze, turkey-buzzards 
wheel gracefully, occasionally chased by au- 
dacious hawks; and in the woods, we hear the 



Melancholy Fishers 209 

warble of song-birds. Shadowy, idle scenes, 
these rustic reaches of the lower Ohio, through 
which man may dream in Nature's lap, all 
regardless of the workaday world. 

It was early evening when we passed Madi- 
son, Ind. (553 miles), a fairly-prosperous fac- 
tory town of about twelve thousand souls. 
Scores of the inhabitants were out in boats, 
collecting driftwood; and upon the wharf was 
a great crowd of people, waiting for an excur- 
sion boat which was to return them to Louis- 
ville, whence they had come for a day's outing. 
It was a lifeless, melancholy party, as excur- 
sion folk are apt to be at the close of a gala 
day, and they wearily stared at us as we pad- 
dled past. 

Just below, on the Kentucky shore, on my 
usual search for milk and water, I landed at a 
cluster of rude cottages set in pleasant market 
gardens. While the others drifted by with 
Pilgrim, I had a goodly walk before finding 
milk, for a cow is considered a luxury among 
these small riverside cultivators; the man who 
owns one sells milk to his poorer neighbors. 
Such a nabob was at last found. The animal 
was called down from the rocky hills, by her 
barefooted owner, who, lank and malaria- 
14 



2io On the Storied Ohio 

skinned, leaned wearily against the well-curb, 
while his wife, also guiltless of hose and shoes, 
milked into my pail direct from the lean and 
hungry brindle. 

By the time the crew were reunited, storm- 
clouds, thick and black, were fast rising in the 
west. Scudding down shore for a mile, with 
oars and paddle aiding the swift current, we 
failed to find a proper camping-place on the 
muddy bank of the far-stretching bottom. 
Rain-drops were now pattering on our rubber 
spreads, and it was evident that a blow was 
coming; but despite this, we bent to the work 
with renewed vigor, and shot across to the lee 
shore of Indiana — finally landing in the midst 
of a heavy shower, and hurriedly pitching 
tent on a rocky slope at the base of a vertical 
bank of clay. Above us, a government bea- 
con shines brightly through the persistent 
storm, with the keeper's neat little house and 
garden a hundred yards away. In the tree- 
tops, up a heavily-forested hill beyond, the 
wind moans right dismally. In this sheltered 
nook, we shall be but lulled to sleep by the 
ceaseless pelting of the rain. 

Louisville, Monday, May 28th. — At mid- 



A Shanty-Boatman 211 

night, the heavens cleared, with a cold north 
wind; the early morning atmosphere was 
nipping, and we were glad of the shelter of 
the tent during breakfast. The river fell eight 
inches during the night, and on either bank is 
a muddy strip, which will rapidly widen as 
the water goes down. 

Below us, twenty rods or so, moored to the 
boulder-strewn shore, was a shanty-boat. In 
the bustle of landing, last night, we had not 
noticed this neighbor, and it was pitch-dark 
before we had time to get our bearings. I 
think it is the most dilapidated affair we have 
seen on the river — the frame of the cabin is 
out of plumb, old clothes serve for sides and 
flap loudly in the wind; while two little boys, 
who peered at us through slits in the airy walls, 
looked fairly miserable with cold. 

The proprietor of the craft came up to visit 
us, while breakfast was being prepared, and re- 
mained until we were ready to depart — a tall, 
slouchy fellow, clothed in shreds and patches; 
he was in the prime of life, with a depressed 
nose set in a battered, though not unpleasant 
countenance. None of our party had ever 
before seen such garments on a human being — ■ 
old bits of flannel, frayed strips of bagging- 



212 On the Storied Ohio 

stuff, and other curious odds and ends of fab- 
rics, in all the primitive colors, the whole 
roughly basted together with sack-thread. He 
was a philosopher, was this rag-tag-and-bob- 
tail of a man, a philosopher with some mother- 
wit about him. For an hour, he sat on his 
haunches, crouching over our little stove, and 
following with cat-like care W — 's every move- 
ment in the culinary art; she felt she was under 
the eye of a critic who, though not voicing his 
opinions, looked as if he knew a thing or two. 

As a conversationist, our visitor was fluent 
to a fault. It required but slight urging to 
draw him out. His history, and that of his 
fathers for some generations back, he recited 
in much detail. He himself had, in his best 
days, been a sub-contractor in railway con- 
struction; but fate had gone against him, and 
he had fallen to the low estate of a shanty- 
boatman. His wife had " gone back on him," 
and he was left with two little boys, whom he 
proposed to bring up as gentlemen — "yaas, 
sir-r, gen'lem'n, yew hear me! ef I is only a 
shanty-boat feller!" 

"I thote I'd come to visit uv ye," he had 
said by way of introduction; "ye're frum a 
city, ain't yer? Yaas, I jist thote hit. City 



Benefits of Education 2 1 3 

folks is a more 'com'dat'n' 'n country folks. 
Why? Waal, yew fellers jist go back 'ere in 
th' hills away, 'n them thar country folks 
they'd hardly answer ye, they're thet selfish- 
like. Give me city folks, I say, fer get'n' long 
with!" 

And then, in a rambling monologue, while 
chewing a straw, he discussed humanity in 
general, and the professions in particular. ' ' I 
ain't got no use fer lawyers — mighty hard show 
them fellers has, fer get'n' to heaven. As fer 
doctors — waal, they'll hev hard sledd'n, too; 
but them fellers has to do piles o' dis'gree'bl' 
work, they do; I'd jist rather fish fer a liv'n', 
then be a doctor! Still, sir-r, give me an eddi- 
cated man every time, says I. Waal, sir-r, 
'n' ye hear me, one o' th' richest fellers right 
here in Madison, wuz born 'n' riz on a shanty- 
boat, 'n' no mistake. He jist done pick up his 
eddication from folks pass'n' by, jes' as yew 
fellers is a passin', 'n' they might say a few 
wuds o' infermation to him. He done git a 
fine eddication jes' thet way, 'n' they ain't no 
flies on him, these days, when money-gett'n' 
is 'roun'. Jes' noth'n' like it, sir-r! Eddica- 
tion does th' biz!" 

An observant man was this philosopher, and 



214 On the Storied Ohio 

had studied human nature to some purpose. 
He described the condition of the poor farmers 
along the river, as being pitiful; they had no 
money to hire help, and were an odd lot, any- 
way — the farther back in the hills you get, the 
worse they are. 

He loved to talk about himself and his lowly 
condition, in contrast with his former glory as 
a sub-contractor on the railway. When a 
man was down, he said, he lost all his friends — 
and, to illustrate this familiar experience, told 
two stories which he had often read in a book 
that he owned. They were curious, old-fash- 
ioned tales of feudal days, evidently written 
in a former century, — he did not know the 
title of the volume, — and he related them in 
what evidently were the actual words of the 
author: a curious recitation, in the pedantic 
literary style of the ancient story-teller, but in 
the dialect of an Ohio-river * 'cracker." His 
greatest ambition, he told us, was to own a 
floating sawmill; although he carefully inquired 
about the laws regulating peddlers in our State, 
and intimated that sometime he might look 
us up in that capacity, in our Northern home. 

As we approach Louisville to-day, the set-: 
tlements somewhat increase in number, al- 



Distance Lends Enchantment 215 

though none of the villages are of great size; 
and, especially in Kentucky, they are from 
ten to twenty miles apart. The fine hills con- 
tinue close upon our path until a few miles 
above Louisville, when they recede, leaving 
on the Kentucky side a broad, flat plain sev- 
eral miles square, for the city's growth. For 
the most part, these stony slopes are well 
wooded with elm, buckeye, maple, ash, oak, 
locust, hickory, sycamore, cotton-wood, a few 
cedars, and here and there a catalpa and a 
pawpaw giving a touch of tropical luxuriance 
to the hillside forest; while blackberry bushes, 
bignonia vines, and poison ivy are every- 
where abundant; otherwise, there is little of 
interest to the botanist. Redbirds, catbirds, 
bluebirds, blackbirds, and crows are chatter- 
ing noisily in the trees, and turkey-buzzards 
everywhere swirl and swoop in mid-air. 

The narrow little bottoms are sandy; and 
on lowland as well as highland there is much 
poor, rock-bewitched soil. The little white- 
washed farmsteads look pretty enough in 
the morning haze, lying half hid in forest 
clumps; but upon approach they invariably 
prove unkempt and dirty, and swarming with 
shiftless, barefooted, unhealthy folk, whom 



216 On the Storied Ohio 

no imagination can invest with picturesque 
qualities. Their ragged, unpainted tobacco- 
sheds are straggling about, over the hills; and 
here and there a white patch in the corner of 
a gray field indicates a nursery of tobacco 
plants, soon to be transplanted into ampler 
soil. 

It is not uncommon to find upon a hillside 
a freshly-built log-cabin, set in the midst of a 
clearing, with bristling stumps all around, re- 
minding one of the homes of new settlers on 
the far-away logging-streams of Northern 
Wisconsin or Minnesota; the resemblance is 
the closer, for such notches cut in the edge of 
the Indiana and Kentucky wilderness are often 
found after a row of many miles through a 
winding forest solitude apparently but little 
changed from primeval conditions. Now and 
then we come across quarries, where stone is 
slid down great chutes to barges which lie 
moored by the rocky bank; and frequently is 
the stream lined with great boulders, which 
stand knee-deep in the flood that eddies and 
gurgles around them. 

On the upper edge of the great Louisville 
plain, we pitched tent in the middle of the 
afternoon; and, having brought our bag of 



The Savage State 217 

land-clothes with us in the skiff, from Cincin- 
nati, took turns under the canvas in effecting 
what transformation was desirable, prepara- 
tory to a visit in the city. In the early twi- 
light we were floating past Towhead Island, 
with its almost solid flank of houseboats, 
threading our way through a little fleet of 
pleasure yachts, and at last shooting into the 
snug harbor of the Boat Club. The good- 
natured captain of the U. S. Life Saving Sta- 
tion took Pilgrim and her cargo in charge for 
the night, and by dusk we were bowling over 
metropolitan pavements en route to the house 
of our friend — strange contrast, this lap of 
luxury, to the soldier-like simplicity of our 
canvas home. We have been roughing it for 
so long,— less than a month, although it seems 
a year, — that all these conveniences of civil- 
ization, these social conventionalities, have to 
us a sort of foreign air. Thus easily may man 
descend into the savage state. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

Storied Louisville — Red Indians and 

white a night on sand island new 

Albany — Riverside hermits — The river 

FALLING A DESERTED VILLAGE An IDEAL 

CAMP. 

Sand Island, Tuesday, May 29th. — Our 
Louisville host is the best living authority on 
the annals of his town. It was a delight and 
an inspiration to go with him, to-day, the 
rounds of the historic places. Much that was 
to me heretofore foggy in Louisville story was 
made clear, upon becoming familiar with the 
setting. The contention is made that La 
Salle was here at the Falls of the Ohio, during 
the closing months of 1669; but it was over a 
century later, under British domination, be- 
fore a settlement was thought of. Dr. John 
Connolly entertained a scheme for founding a 
town at the Falls, but Lord Dunmore's War 
(1774), and the Revolution quickly following, 
combined to put an end to it; so that when 
George Rogers Clark arrived on the scene with 
218 



Falls of the Ohio 2 1 9 

his little band of Virginian volunteers (May, 
1778), en route to capture the Northwest for 
the State of Virginia, he found naught but a 
savage-haunted wilderness. His log fort on 
Corn Island, in the midst of the rapids, served 
as a base of military operations, and was the 
nucleus of American settlement, although later 
the inhabitants moved to the mainland, and 
founded Louisville. 

The falls at Louisville are the only consid- 
erable obstruction to Ohio-River navigation. 
At an average stage, the descent is but twenty- 
seven feet in two-and-a-half miles; in high 
flood, the rapids degenerate into merely swift 
water, without danger to descending craft. 
At ordinary height, it was the custom of pio- 
neer boatmen, in descending, to lighten their 
craft of at least a third of the cargo, and thus 
pass them down to the foot of the north-side 
portage (Clarksville, Ind.), which is three- 
quarters of a mile in length; going up, lightened 
boats were towed against the stream. With 
the advent of larger craft, a canal with locks 
became necessary — the Louisville and Portland 
Canal of to-day, which is operated by the fed- 
eral government. 

The action of the water, hastened by the 



220 On the Storied Ohio 

destruction of trees whose roots originally 
bound the loose soil, has greatly worn the 
islands in the rapids. Little is now left of 
historic Corn Island, and that little is, at low 
water, being blasted and ground into cement 
by a mill hard by on the main shore. To- 
day, with a flood of nearly twenty feet above 
the normal stage of the season, not much of 
the island is visible, — clumps of willows and 
sycamores, swayed by the rushing current, 
giving a general idea of the contour. Goose 
Island, although much smaller than in Clark's 
day, is a considerable tract of wooded land, 
with a rock foundation. Clark was once its 
owner, his home being opposite on the Indiana 
shore, where he had a fine view of the river, 
the rapids, and the several islands. As for 
Clarksville, somewhat lower down, and back 
from the river a half mile, it is now but a 
cluster of dwellings on the outskirts of New 
Albany, a manufacturing town which is rap- 
idly absorbing all the neighboring territory. 

Feeling obliged to make an early start, we 
concluded to pass the night just below the 
canal on Sand Island, lying between New 
Albany and Louisville's noisy manufacturing 
suburb, Portland. An historic spot is this 



An Aboriginal Tradition 221 

insular home of ours. At the treaty of Fort 
Charlotte, Cornstalk told Lord Dunmore the 
legend familiar among Ohio River savages — 
that here, in ages past, occurred the last great 
battle between the white and the red Indians. 
It is one of the puzzles of the antiquarians, 
this tradition that white Indians once lived in 
the land, but were swept away by the reds; 
Cornstalk had used it to spur his followers to 
mighty deeds, it was a precedent which Pon- 
tiac dwelt upon when organizing his conspir- 
acy, and King Philip is said to have been 
inspired by it. But this is no place to discuss 
the genesis of the tale. Suffice it, that on 
Sand Island have been discovered great quan- 
tities of ancient remains. No doubt, in its 
day, it was an over-filled burying-ground. 

Noises, far different from the clash of sav- 
age arms, are in the air to-night. Far above 
our heads a great iron bridge crosses the Ohio, 
some of its piers resting on the island, — a busy 
combination thoroughfare for steam and elec- 
tric railways, for pedestrians and for vehicles, 
plying between New Albany and Portland. 
The whirr of the trolley, the scream and rum- 
ble of locomotives, the rattle of wagons; and 
just above the island head, the burly roar of 



222 On the Storied Ohio 

steamboats signaling the locks, — these are the 
sounds which are prevalent. Through all this 
hubbub, electric lamps are flashing, and just 
now a steamer's search-light swept our island 
shore, lingering for a moment upon the little 
camp, doubtless while the pilot satisfied his 
curiosity. Let us hope that savage warriors 
never o' nights walk the earth above their 
graves; for such scenes as this might well 
cause those whose bones lie here to doubt 
their senses. 

Near Brandenburg, Ky., Wednesday, 
30th. — We stopped at New Albany, Ind. (603 
miles), this morning, to stock the larder and 
to forward our shore-clothes by express to 
Cairo. It is a neat and busy manufacturing 
town, with an excellent public market. A gala 
aspect was prevalent, for it is Memorial Day; 
the shops and principal buildings were gay 
with bunting, and men in Grand Army uni- 
forms stood in knots at the street corners. 

The broad, fertile plain on both sides of the 
river, upon which Louisville and New Albany 
are the principal towns, extends for eight or 
nine miles below the rapids. The first hills 
to approach the stream are those in Indiana. 



Ragged Farmsteads 223 

Salt River, some ten or twelve rods wide, en- 
ters from the south twenty-one miles below 
New Albany, between uninteresting high clay 
banks, with the lazy-looking little village of 
West Point, Ky. , occupying a small rise of 
ground just below the mouth. The Kentucky 
hills come close to the bank, a mile or two 
farther down, and then the familiar character- 
istics of the reaches above Louisville are re- 
sumed — hills and bottoms, sparsely settled 
with ragged farmsteads, regularly alternating. 

At five o'clock we put in at a rocky ledge 
on the Indiana side, a mile-and-a-half above 
Brandenburg. Behind us rises a precipitous 
hill, tree-clad to the summit. The Doctor 
found up there a new phlox and a pretty pink 
stone-crop, to add to our herbarium, while here 
as elsewhere the bignonia grows profusely in 
every crevice of the rock. At dark, two rag- 
ged and ill-smelling young shanty-boat men, 
who are moored hard by, came up to see us, 
and by our camp-fire to whittle chips and 
drone about hard times. But at last we tired 
of their idle gossip, which had in it no ele- 
ment of the picturesque, and got rid of them 
by hinting our desire to turn in. 

The towns were few to-day, and small. 



224 On the Storied Ohio 

Brandenburg, with eight hundred souls, was 
the largest — a sleepy, ill-paved, shambling 
place, with apparently nobody engaged in any 
serious calling; its chief distinction is an archi- 
tectural monstrosity, which we were told is 
the court-house. The little white hamlet of 
New Amsterdam, Ind. (650 miles), looked 
trim and bright in the midst of a green thicket. 
Richardson's Landing, Ky. , is a disheveled 
row of old deserted houses, once used by lime- 
burners, with a great barge wrecked upon the 
beach. At the small, characterless Indiana 
village of Leavenworth (658 miles), I sought 
a traveling photographer, of whom I had been 
told at Brandenburg. My quest was for a 
dark-room where I might recharge my ex- 
hausted kodak; but the man of plates had 
packed up his tent and moved on — I would 
no doubt find him in Alton, Ind., fifteen miles 
lower down. 

We have had stately, eroded hills, and 
broad, fertile bottoms, hemming us in all day, 
and marvelous ox-bows in the erratic stream. 
The hillsides are heavily wooded, sometimes 
the slopes coming straight down to the stony 
beach, without intervening terrace; where 
there are such terraces, they are narrow and 



Malaria-Ridden 225 

rocky, and the homes of shanty-men; but 
upon the bottoms are whitewashed dwell- 
ings of frame or log, tenanted by a better class, 
who sometimes have goodly orchards and ex- 
tensive corn-cribs. The villages are generally 
in the deep-cut notches of the hills, where the 
interior can be conveniently reached by a 
wagon-road — a country "rumpled like this," 
they say, for ten or twelve miles back, and 
then stretching off into level plains of fertility. 
Now and then, a deserted cabin on the ter- 
races, — windowless and gaunt, — tells the story 
of some "cracker" family that malaria has 
killed off, or that has "pulled up stakes" 
and gone, to seek a better land. 

At Leavenworth, the river, which has been 
flowing northwest for thirty miles, takes a 
sudden sweep to the southwest, and thencefor- 
ward we have a rapid current. However, we 
need still to ply our blades, for there is a stiff 
head-wind, with an eager nip in it, to escape 
which we seek the lee as often as may be, 
and bask in the undisturbed sunlight. Right 
glad we were, at luncheon-time, to find a 
sheltered nook amidst a heap of boulders on 
the Kentucky shore, and to sit on the sun- 
warmed sand and drink hot tea by the side of 
15 



226 On the Storied Ohio 

a camp-fire, rejoicing in the kindness of Prov- 
idence. 

There are few houseboats, since leaving 
Louisville; to-day we have seen but three or 
four — one of them merrily going up stream, 
under full sail. Islands, too, are few — the 
Upper and Lower Blue River, a pretty pair, 
being the first we have met since Sunday. 
The water is falling, it now being three or 
four feet below the stage of a few days since, 
as can readily be seen from the broad dado of 
mud left on the leaves of willows and syca- 
mores; while the drift, recently an ever-pres- 
ent feature of the current, is rapidly lodging 
in the branches of the willows and piling up 
against the sand-spits; and scrawling snags 
and bobbing sawyers are catching on the bars, 
and being held for the next "fresh." 

There is little life along shore, in these lower 
waters. There are two lines of ever-widen- 
ing, willowed beach of rock and sand or mud; 
above them, perpendicular walls of clay, which 
edge either rocky terraces backed by grand 
sweeps of convoluted hills, — sometimes wooded 
to the top, and sometimes eroded into pal- 
isades, — or wide-stretching bottoms given over 
to small farms or maybe dense tangles of forest. 



Point Sandy 227 

In the midst of this world of shade, nestle 
the whitewashed cabins of the small tillers; 
but though they swarm with children, it is not 
often that the inhabitants appear by the river- 
side. We catch a glimpse of them when 
landing on our petty errands, we now and 
then see a houseboater at his nets, and in the 
villages a few lackadaisical folk are lounging 
by the wharf; but as a rule, in these closing 
days of our pilgrimage, we glide through what 
is almost a solitude. The imagination has 
not far to go afield, to rehabilitate the river 
as it appeared to the earliest voyagers. 

Late in the afternoon, as usual wishing 
water and milk, we put ashore in Indiana, 
where a rustic landing indicated a settlement 
of some sort, although our view was confined 
to a pretty, wooded bank, and an unpainted 
warehouse at the top of the path. It was a 
fertile bottom, a half-mile wide, and stretch- 
ing a mile or two along the river. Three 
neat houses, one of them of logs, constituted 
the village, and all about were grain-fields 
rippled into waves by the northwest breeze. 

The first house, a quarter of a mile inland, 
I reached by a country roadway; it proved to 
be the postoffice of Point Sandy. Chickens 



228 On the Storied Ohio 

clucked around me, a spaniel came fawning 
for attention, a tethered cow mooed plain- 
tively, but no human being was visible. At 
last I discovered a penciled notice pinned to 
the horse-block, to the effect that the post- 
master had gone into Alton (five miles distant) 
for the day; and should William Askins call 
in his absence, the said Askins was to remem- 
ber that he promised to call yesterday, but 
never came; and now would he be kind enough 
to come without fail to-morrow before sun- 
down, or the postmaster would be obliged to 
write that letter they had spoken about. It 
was quite evident that Askins had not called; 
for he surely would not have left that myste- 
rious notice sticking there, for all Point Sandy 
to read and gossip over. It is to be hoped 
that there will be no bloodshed over this 
affair; across the way, in Kentucky, there 
would be no doubt as to the outcome. 

I looked at Boss, and wondered whether in 
Indiana it were felony to milk another man's 
cow in his absence, with no ginger jar at 
hand, into which to drop a compensatory 
dime. Then I saw that she was dry, and con- 
cluded that to attempt it might be thought a 
violation of ethics. The postmaster's well, 



The Deserted Village 229 

too, proved to be a cistern, — pardon the Hi- 
bernicism, — and so I went farther. 

The other frame house also turned out to 
be deserted, but evidently only for the day, 
for the lilac bushes in the front yard were 
hung with men's flannel shirts drying in the 
sun. A buck goat came bleating toward me, 
with many a flourish of his horns, from which 
it was plain to be seen why the family wash 
was not spread upon the grass. From here I 
followed a narrow path through a wheat-field, 
the grain up to my shoulders, toward the log 
dwelling. A mangy little cur disputed my 
right to knock at the door; but, flourishing 
my two tin pails at him, he flew yelping to 
take refuge in the hen-coop. To my sum- 
mons at the portal, there came no response, 
save the mewing of the cat within. It was 
clear that the people of Point Sandy were not 
at home, to-day. 

I would have retreated to the boat, but, 
chancing to glance up at the overhanging hills 
which edge in the bottom, saw two men sit- 
ting on a boulder in front of a rude log hut on 
the brink of a cliff, curiously watching my 
movements on the plain. Thankful, now, 
that the postmaster's cow had gone dry, and 



230 On the Storied Ohio 

that these observant mountaineers had not 
had an opportunity to misinterpret my con- 
duct, I at once hurried toward the hill, hope- 
ful that at the top some bovine might be 
housed, whose product could lawfully be ac- 
quired. But after a long and laborious climb, 
over shifting stones and ragged ledges, I was 
met with the discouraging information that 
the only cow in these parts was Hawkins' 
cow, and Hawkins was the postmaster, — 
"down yon, whar yew were a-read'n' th' no- 
tices on th' hoss-block." Neither had they 
any water, up there on the cliff-top — " don' use 
very much, stranger; 'n' what we do, we done 
git at Smithfield's, in th' log-house down yon, 
'n' I reck'n their cistern's done gone dry, any- 
how!" 

"But what is the matter down there?" I 
asked of the old man, — they were father and 
son, this lounging pair who thus loftily sat in 
judgment on the little world at their feet; 
"why are all the folks away from home?" 

He looked surprised, and took a fresh chew 
while cogitating on my alarming ignorance of 
Point Sandy affairs: "Why, ain' ye heared? 
I thote ev'ry feller on th' river knew thet 
yere — why, ol' Hawkins, his wife's brother's 



The World as It Is 231 

buried in Alton to-day, 'n' th' neighbors done 
gwine t' th' fun'ral. Whar your shanty-boat 
been beached, thet ye ain' heared thet yere?" 

As the sun neared the horizon, we tried 
other places below, with no better success; 
and two miles above Alton, Ind. (673 miles), 
struck camp at sundown, without milk for our 
coffee — for water, being obliged to settle and 
boil the roily element which bears us onward 
through the lengthening days. Were there 
no hardships, this would be no pilgrimage 
worthy of the name. We are out, philosoph- 
ically to take the world as it is; he who is not 
content to do so, had best not stir from home. 

But our camping-place, to-night, is ideal. 
We are upon a narrow, grassy ledge; below 
us, the sloping beach astrewn with jagged 
rocks; behind us rises steeply a grand hillside 
forest, in which lie, mantled with moss and 
lichens, and deep buried in undergrowth, boul- 
ders as large as a " cracker's" hut; romantic 
glens abound, and a little run comes noisily 
down a ravine hard by, — it is a witching back- 
door, filled with surprises at every turn. 
Beeches, elms, maples, lindens, pawpaws, 
tulip trees, here attain a monster growth, — 
with grape-vines, their fruit now set, hanging 



232 On the Storied Ohio 

in great festoons from the branches; and all 
about, are the flowers which thrive best in 
shady solitudes — wild licorice, a small green- 
brier, and, although not yet in bloom, the 
sessile trillium. We are thoroughly isolated; 
a half-mile above us, faintly gleams a govern- 
ment beacon, and we noticed on landing that 
three-quarters of a mile below is a small cabin 
flanking the hill. Naught disturbs our quiet, 
save the calls of the birds at roosting-time, and 
now and then the hoarse bellow of a passing 
packet, with its legacy of boisterous wake. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Village life — A traveling photographer 
— On a country road — Studies in color — 
Again among colliers — In sweet con- 
tent — A FERRY ROMANCE. 

Near Troy, Ind., Friday, June ist. — Be- 
low Alton, the hills are not so high as above. 
We have, however, the same thoroughly rustic 
landscape, the same small farms on the bot- 
toms and wretched cabins on the slopes, the 
same frontier-like clearings thick with stumps, 
the same shabby little villages, and frequent 
ox-bow windings of the generous stream, with 
lovely vistas unfolding and dissolving with pano- 
ramic regularity. It is not a region where house- 
boaters flourish — there is but one every ten 
miles or so; as for steamboats, we see on an 
average one a day, while two or three usually 
pass us in the night. 

A dry, unpainted little place is Alton, Ind., 
with three down-at-the-heel shops, a tavern, a 
saloon, and a few dwellings; there was no 
233 



234 On the Storied Ohio 

bread obtainable here, for love or money, and 
we were fain to be content with a bag of 
crackers from the postomce grocery. The 
promised photographer, who appears to be a 
rapid traveler, was said to have gone on to 
Concordia, eight miles below. 

Deep Water Landing, Ind. (676 miles), is a 
short row of new, whitewashed houses, with a 
great board sign displaying the name of the 
hamlet, doubtless to attract the attention of 
pilots. A rude little show-case, nailed up 
beside the door of the house at the head of the 
landing-path, contains tempting samples of 
crockery and tinware. Apparently some en- 
terprising soul is trying to grow a town here, 
on this narrow ledge of clay, with his landing 
and his shop as a nucleus. But it is an unlikely 
spot, and I doubt if his "boom" will develop 
to the corner-lot stage. 

Rono, Ind., a mile below, with its limewashed 
buildings set in a bower of trees, at the base 
of a bald bluff, is a rather pretty study in gray 
and green and white. The most notable fea- 
ture is a little school-house-like Masonic hall 
set high on a stone foundation, with a steep 
outer stairway — which gives one an impression 
that Rono is a victim of floods, and that the 



/I FAMILIAR scene upo?i the river. Bulky freight, 
■*■■*■ such as coal, timber, ties, stone, and brick, is thus moved 
much more cheaply than by rail. 



A Logging Town 235 

brethren occasionally come in boats to lodge- 
meetings. 

Concordia, Ky. (681 miles), rests on the 
summit of a steep clay bank, from which men 
were loading a barge with bark. Great piles 
of blocks, for staves, ornamented the crest of 
the rise — a considerable industry for these 
parts, we were told. But the photographer, 
whom we were chasing, had ''taken" every 
Concordian who wished his services, and moved 
on to Derby, another Kentucky village, which 
at last we found, six miles farther down the 
river. 

The principal occupation of the people of 
Derby is getting out timber from the hillside 
forests, six to ten miles in the interior. Oak, 
elm, and sycamore railway-ties are the spe- 
cialty, these being worth twenty cents each 
when landed upon the wharf. A few months 
ago, Derby was completely destroyed by fire, 
but, although the timber business is on the 
wane here, much of the place was rebuilt on 
the old foundations; hence the fresh, unpainted 
buildings, with battlement fronts, which, with 
the prevalence of open-door saloons and a 
woodsy swagger on the part of the inhabitants, 



236 On the Storied Ohio 

give the place a breezy, frontier aspect now 
seldom to be met with this side of the Rockies. 

Here at last was the traveling photographer. 
His tent, flapping loudly in the wind, occupied 
an empty lot in the heart of the village — a 
saloon on either side, and a lumberman's 
boarding house across the way, where the 
1 ' artist " was at dinner, pending which I waited 
for him at the door of his canvas gallery. He 
evidently seeks to magnify his calling, does 
this raw youth of the camera, by affecting 
what he conceives to be the traditional garb 
of the artistic Bohemian, but which resembles 
more closely the costume of the minstrel 
stage — a battered silk hat, surmounting flow- 
ing locks glistening with hair-oil; a loose vel- 
veteen jacket, over a gay figured vest; and a 
great brass watch-chain, from which dangle 
silver coins. As this grotesque dandy, evi- 
dently not long from his native village, came 
mincing across the road in patent-leather slip- 
pers, smoking a cigarette, with one thumb in 
an arm-hole of his vest, and the other hand 
twirling an incipient mustache, he was plainly 
conscious of creating something of a swell in 
Derby. 

It was a crazy little dark-room to which I 



A Traveling Photographer 237 

was shown — a portable affair, much like a 
coffin-case, which I expected momentarily to 
upset as I stood within, and be smothered in a 
cloud of ill-smelling chemicals. However, 
with care I finally emerged without accident, 
and sufficiently compensated the artist, who 
seemed not over-favorable to amateur compe- 
tition, although he chatted freely enough about 
his business. It generally took him ten days, 
he said, to ''finish" a town of five or six hun- 
dred inhabitants, like Derby. He traveled on 
steamers with his tenting outfit, but next sea- 
son hoped to have money enough to "do the 
thing in style," in a houseboat of his own, an 
establishment which would cost say four hun- 
dred dollars; then, in the winter, he could 
beach himself at some fair-sized town, and 
perhaps make his board by running a local 
gallery, taking to the water again on the ear- 
liest spring "fresh." "I could live like a 
fight'n' cock then, cap'n, yew jist bet yer bot- 
tom dollar!" 

The temperature mounted with the prog- 
ress of the day; and, the wind dying down, 
the atmosphere was oppressive. By the time 
Stephensport, Ky. (695 miles), was reached, 
in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was 



238 On the Storied Ohio 

beating fiercely upon the glassy flood, and our 
awning came again into play, although it 
could not save us from the annoyance of the 
reflection. The barren clay bank at the mouth 
of Sinking Creek, upon which lies Stephens- 
port, seemed fairly ablaze with heat, as I went 
up into the straggling hamlet to seek for sup- 
plies. There were no eggs to be had here; 
but, at last, milk was found in the farther end 
of the village, at a modest little cottage quite 
embowered in roses, with two century plants 
in tubs in the back-yard, and a trim fruit and 
vegetable garden to the rear of that, enclosed 
in palings. I remained a few minutes to chat 
with the little housewife, who knows her roses 
well, and is versed in the gentle art of horti- 
culture. But her horizon is painfully nar- 
row — first and dearest, the plants about her, 
which is not so bad; in a larger way, Stephens- 
port and its petty affairs; but beyond that 
very little, and that little vague. 

It is ever thus, in such far-away, side-tracked 
villages as this — the world lies in the basin of 
the hills which these people see from their- 
doors; if they have something to love and do for, 
as this good woman has in her bushes, seeds, 
and bulbs, then may they dwell happily in 



An Unwelcome Caller 239 

rustic obscurity; but where, as is more com- 
mon, the small-beer of neighborhood gossip is 
their meat and drink, there are no folk on the 
footstool more wretched than the denizens of 
a dead little hamlet like Stephensport. 

We are housed this night on the Kentucky 
side, a mile-and-a-half above Cloverport, 
whose half-dozen lights are glimmering in the 
stream. In the gloaming, while dinner was 
being prepared, a ragged but sturdy wanderer 
came into camp. He was, he said, a moun- 
taineer looking for work on the bottom farms; 
heretofore he had, when he wanted it, always 
found it; but this season no one appeared to 
have any money to expend for labor, and it 
seemed likely he would be obliged to return 
home without receiving an offer. We made 
the stranger no offer of a seat at our humble 
board, having no desire that he pass the night 
in our neighborhood; for darkness was com- 
ing on apace, and, if he long tarried, the 
woodland road would be as black as a pocket 
before he could reach Cloverport, his alleged 
destination. So starting him off with a bis- 
cuit or two, he was soon on his way toward 
the village, whistling a lively tune. 



240 On the Storied Ohio 

Crooked Creek, Ind., Saturday, 2d. — We 
had but fairly got to bed last night, after our 
late dinner, when the heavens suddenly dark- 
ened, fierce gusts of wind shook the tent vio- 
lently, and then rain fell in blinding sheets. 
For a time it was lively work for the Doctor 
and me, tightening guy-ropes and ditching in 
the soft sand, for we were in an exposed 
position, catching the full force of the storm. 
At last, everything secured, we in serenity 
slept it out, awakening to find a beautiful 
morning, the grape-perfumed air as clear as 
crystal, the outlines of woods and hills and 
streams standing out with sharp definition, 
and over all a hushed charm most soothing to 
the spirit. 

Cloverport (705 miles) is a typical Kentucky 
town, of somewhat less than four thousand 
inhabitants. The wharf-boat, which runs up 
and down an iron tramway, according to the 
height of the flood, was swarming with negroes, 
watching with keen delight the departure of 
the "E. D. Rogan, " as she noisily backed out 
into the river and scattered the crowd with 
great showers of spray from her gigantic stern- 
wheel. It was a busy scene on board — negro 
roustabouts shipping the gang-plank, and sing- 



Picaninnies 241 

ing in a low pitch an old-time plantation mel- 
ody; stokers, stripped to the waist, shoveling 
coal into the gaping furnaces; chambermaids 
hanging the ship's linen out to dry; passengers 
crowded by the shore rail, on the main deck; 
the bustling mate shouting orders, apparently 
for the benefit of landsmen, for no one on 
board appeared to heed him; and high up, in 
front of the pilot-house, the spruce captain, 
in gold-laced cap, and glass in hand, as im- 
movable as the Sphinx. 

At the head of the slope were a picturesque 
medley of colored folk, of true Southern plan- 
tation types, so seldom seen north of Dixie. 
Two wee picaninnies, drawn in an express 
cart by a half-dozen other sable elfs, attracted 
our attention, as W — and I went up-town 
for our day's marketing. We stopped to take 
a snap-shot at them, to the intense satisfac- 
tion of the little kink-haired mother of the 
twins, who, barring her blue calico gown, 
looked as though she might have stepped out 
of a Zulu group. 

Cloverport has brick-works, gas wells, a 

flouring-mill, and other industries. The streets 

are unkempt, as in most Kentucky towns, and 

mules attached to crazy little carts are the 

16 



242 On the Storied Ohio 

chief beasts of burden; but the shops are well- 
stocked; there were many farmers in town, 
on horse and mule back, doing their Saturday 
shopping; and an air of business confidence 
prevails. 

In this district, coal-mines again appear, 
with their riverside tipples, and their offal de- 
filing the banks. In general, these reaches 
have many of the aspects of the Monongahela, 
although the hills are lower, and mining is on 
a smaller scale. Cannelton, Ind. (717 miles), 
is the headquarters of the American Cannel 
Coal Co. ; there are, also, woolen and cotton 
mills, sewer-pipe factories, and potteries. 
W — and I went up into the town, on an er- 
rand for supplies, — we distribute our small 
patronage, for the sake of frequently going 
ashore, — and were interested in noting the 
cheery tone of the business men, who reported 
that the financial depression, noticeable else- 
where in the Ohio Valley, has practically been 
unfelt here. Hawesville, Ky. , just across the 
river, has a similarly prosperous look, but we 
did not row across to inspect it at close range. 
Tell City, Ind. , three miles below, is another 
flourishing factory town, whose wharf-boat 
was the scene of much bustle. Four miles 



Walls of Clay 243 

still lower down lies the sleepy little Indiana 
village of Troy, which appears to have profited 
nothing from having lively neighbors. 

From the neighborhood of Derby, the en- 
vironing hills had, as we proceeded, been less- 
ening in height, although still ruggedly beauti- 
ful. A mile or two below Troy, both ranges 
suddenly roll back into the interior, leaving 
broad bottoms on either hand, occasionally 
edged with high clay banks, through which the 
river has cut its devious way. Elsewhere, these 
bottoms slope gently to the beach and every- 
where are cultivated with such care that often 
no room is left for the willow fringe, which 
heretofore has been an ever-present feature of 
the landscape. Hereafter, to the mouth, we 
shall for the most part row between parallel 
walls of clay, with here and there a bankside 
ledge of rock and shale, and now and then a 
cragged spur running out to meet the river. 
We have now entered the great corn and 
tobacco belt of the Lower Ohio, the region of 
annual overflow, where the towns seek the 
highlands, and the bottom farmers erect their 
few crude buildings on posts, prepared in case 
of exceptional flood to take to boats. 

The prevalent eagerness on the part of 



244 On the Storied Ohio 

farmers to obtain the utmost from their land 
made it difficult, this evening, to find a proper 
camping-place. We finally found a narrow 
triangle of clay terrace, in Indiana, at the 
mouth of Crooked Creek (727 miles), where 
not long since had tarried a houseboater en- 
gaged in making rustic furniture. It is a pretty 
little bit, in a group of big willows and syca- 
mores, and would be comfortable but for the 
sand-flies, which for the first time give us an- 
noyance. The creek itself, some four rods 
wide, and overhung with stately trees, winds 
gracefully through the rich bottom; we have 
found it a charming water to explore, being 
able to proceed for nearly a mile through 
lovely little wide-spreads abounding in lilies 
and sweet with the odor of grape-blossoms. 

Across the river, at Emmerick's Landing, — 
a little cluster of unpainted cabins, — lies the 
white barge of a photographer, just such a 
home as the Derby artist covets. The Ohio 
is here about half-a-mile wide, but high-pitched 
voices of people on the opposite bank are plainly 
heard across the smooth sounding-board; and 
in the quiet evening air comes to us the ' ' chuck- 
chuck " of oars nearly a mile away. Following 
a torrid afternoon, with exasperating head- 



Nearing the End 245 

winds, this cool, fresh atmosphere, in the long 
twilight, is inspiring. Overhead is the slender 
streak of the moon's first quarter, its reflection 
shimmering in the broad and placid stream 
rushing noiselessly by us to the sea. In bliss- 
ful content we sit upon the bank, and drink 
in the glories of the night. The days of our 
pilgrimage are nearing their end, but our en- 
thusiasm for this al fresco life is in no measure 
abating. That we might ever thus dream and 
drift upon the river of life, far from the labored 
strivings of the world, is our secret wish, to- 
night. 

We had long been sitting thus, having 
silent communion with our thoughts, when 
the Boy, his little head resting on W — 's 
shoulder, broke the spell by murmuring from 
the fullness of his heart, "Mother, why can- 
not we keep on doing this, always ?" 

Yellowbank Island, Sunday, June 3d. — 
Pilgrim still attracts more attention than her 
passengers. When we stop at the village 
wharfs, or grate our keel upon some rustic 
landing, it is not long before the Doctor, who 
now always remains with the boat, no matter 
who goes ashore, is surrounded by an admir- 



246 On the Storied Ohio 

ing group, who rap Pilgrim on the ribs, try to 
lift her by the bow, and study her graceful 
lines with the air of connoisseurs. Barefooted 
men fishing on the shores, in broad straw 
hats and blue jeans, invariably "pass the 
time o' day" with us as we glide by, crying 
out as a parting salute, " Ye've a honey skiff, 
thar!" or, " Right smart skiff, thet yere!" 

We have many long, dreary reaches to-day. 
Clay banks twelve to twenty feet in height, 
and growing taller as the water recedes, rise 
sheer on either side. Fringing the top of 
each is often a row of locusts, whose roots in 
a feeble way hold the soil; but the river cuts 
in at the base, wherever the changing current 
impinges on the shore, and at low water great 
slices, with a gurgling splash, fall into the 
stream, which now is of the color of dull gold, 
from the clay held in solution. Often may 
be seen upon the brink ruins of buildings that 
have collapsed from this undercut of the fickle 
flood ; and many others, still inhabited, are in 
dangerous proximity to the edge, only biding 
their time. 

This morning, we passed the Indiana ham- 
lets of Lewisport (731 miles) and Grand View 
(736 miles), and by noon were at Rockport 



Paddle-Wheel Skiffs 



247 



(741 miles), a smart little city of three thou- 
sand souls, romantically perched upon a great 
rock, which on the right bank rises abruptly 
from the wide expanse of bottom. From the 
river, there is little to be seen of Rockport 
save two wharves, — one above, the other be- 
low, the bold cliff which springs sheer for a 
hundred feet above the stream, — two angling 
roads leading up into the town, a house or 
two on the edge of the hill, and a huge water- 
tower crowning all. 

A few miles below, we ran through a nar- 
row channel, a few rods wide, separating an 
elongated island from the Indiana shore. It 
much resembles the small tributary streams, 
with a lush undergrowth of weeds down to the 
water's edge, and arched with monster syca- 
mores, elms, maples, and persimmons. Fre- 
quently had we seen skiffs upon the shore, 
arranged with stern paddle-wheels, turned by 
levers operated by men standing or sitting in 
the boat. But we had seen none in operation 
until, shooting down this side channel, we 
met such a craft coming up, manned by two 
fellows who seemed to be having a treadmill 
task of it; they assured us, however, that 
when a man was used to manipulating the 



248 On the Storied Ohio 

levers he found it easier than rowing, espe- 
cially in ascending stream. 

Yellowbank Island, our camp to-night, lies 
nearest the Indiana shore, with Owensboro, 
Ky. (749 miles), just across the way. We 
have had no more beautiful home on our long 
pilgrimage than this sandy islet, heavily grown 
to stately willows. While the others were 
preparing dinner, I pulled across the rapid 
current to an Indiana ferry-landing, where 
there is a row of mean frame cabins, like the 
negro quarters of a Southern farm, all elevated 
on posts some four feet above the level. A 
half-dozen families live there, all of them 
small tenant farmers, save the ferryman — a 
strapping, good-natured fellow, who appears 
to be tne nabob of the community. 

Several hollow sycamore stumps house sows 
and their litters; but the only cow in the 
neighborhood is owned by a young man who, 
when I came up, was watering some refrac- 
tory mules at a pump-trough. He paused 
long enough to summon Boss and milk a 
half-gallon into my pail, accepting my dime 
with a degree of thankfulness which was quite 
unnecessary, considering that it was quid pro 
quo. Tobacco is a more important crop than 



The Ferryman's Daughter 249 

corn hereabout, he said; farmers are rather 
impatiently waiting for rain, to set out the 
young plants. His only outbuilding is a mon- 
ster corn-crib, set high on posts — the airy 
basement, no better than an open shed, serv- 
ing for a stable; during the few weeks of 
severe winter weather, horses and cow are 
removed to the main floor, and canvas nailed 
around the sides to keep out the wind. Even 
this slight protection is not given to stock by 
all planters; the majority of them appear to 
provide only rain shelters, and even these can 
be of slight avail in a driving storm. 

Later, in the failing light, W — and I to- 
gether pulled over to the " cracker " settlement, 
seeking drinking-water. A stout young man 
was seated on the end of the ferry barge, 
talking earnestly with the ferryman's daughter, 
a not unattractive girl, but pale and thin, as 
these women are apt to be. Evidently they 
are lovers, and not ashamed of it, for they 
gave us a friendly smile as we knotted our 
painter to the barge-rail, and expressed great 
interest in Pilgrim, she being of a pattern new 
to them. 

We are in a noisy corner of the world. 
Over on the Indiana bottom, a squeaky fiddle is 



250 On the Storied Ohio 

grinding out dance-tunes, hymns, and ballads 
with charming indifference. We thought we 
detected in a high-pitched " Annie Laurie'' 
the voice of the ferryman's daughter. There 
seems, too, to be a deal of rowing on the 
river, evidently Owensboro folk getting back 
to town from a day in the country, and coun- 
try folk hieing home after a day in the city. 
The ferryman is in much demand, judging 
from the frequent ringing of his bell, — one on 
either bank, set between two tall posts, with 
a rope dangling from the arm. At early dusk, 
the cracked bell of the Owensboro Bethel re- 
sounded harshly in our ears, as it advertised 
an evening service for the floating population; 
and now the wheezy strains of a melodeon 
tell us that, although we stayed away, doubt- 
less others have been attracted thither. The 
sepulchral roars of passing steamers echo 
along the wooded shore, the night wind rustles 
the tree-tops, Owensboro dogs are much 
awake, and the electric lamps of the city 
throw upon our canvas screen the fantastic 
shadows of leaves and dancing boughs. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Fishermen's tales — Skiff nomenclature- 
Green River — Evansville — Hender- 
son — Audubon and Rafinesque — Float- 
ing trade — The Wabash. 

Green River Towhead, Monday, June 
4th. — We were shopping in Owensboro, this 
morning, soon after seven o'clock. The busi- 
ness quarter was just stirring into life; and 
the negroes who were lounging about on every 
hand were still drowsy, as if they had passed 
the night there, and were reluctant to be up 
and doing. There is a pretty court-house in 
a green park, the streets are well paved, and 
the shops clean and bright, with their wares 
mostly under the awnings on the sidewalk, for 
people appear to live much out of doors here — 
and well they may, with the temperature 73 ° 
at this early hour, and every promise of a 
scorching day. 

I wonder if a fisherman could, if he tried, 
be exact in his statements. One of them, 
below Owensboro, who kept us company for 
251 



252 On the Storied Ohio 

a mile or two down stream, declared that at 
this stage of the water he made forty and fifty 
dollars a week, "'n' I reck'n I ote to be con- 
tint." A few miles farther on, another com- 
plained that when the river was falling, the 
water was so muddy the fish would not bite; 
and even in the best of seasons, a fisherman 
had "a hard pull uv it; hit ain't no business 
fer a decent man !" The other day, when the 
river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the 
apostle's calling averred that there was no use 
fishing when the water was coming up. As 
the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever 
rising or falling, it would seem that the thou- 
sands in this valley who make fishing their 
livelihood must be playing a losing game. 

There are many beautiful islands on these 
lower reaches of the river. We followed the 
narrow channel between Little Hurricane and 
the Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or 
three miles, with both banks a dense tangle 
of drift-wood, weeds, and vines. Between 
Three-Mile Island and Indiana, is another in- 
teresting cut-short, where the shores are un- 
disturbed by the work of the main stream, 
and trees and undergrowth come down to the 
water's edge; the air is quivering with the 



A Study in Names 253 

songs of birds, and resonant with sweet smells; 
while over stumps, and dead and fallen trees, 
grape-vines luxuriantly festoon and cluster. 
Near the pretty group of French Islands, two 
government dredges, with their boarding 
barges, were moored to the Kentucky shore — 
waiting for coal, we were told, before resum- 
ing operations in the planting of a dike. I 
took a snap-shot at the fleet, and heard one 
man shout to another, "Bill, did yer notice 
they've a photograph gallery aboord ?" They 
appear to be a jolly lot, these dredgers, and 
inclined to take life easily, in accordance with 
the traditions of government employ. 

We frequently see skiffs hauled upon the 
beach, or moored between two protecting 
posts, to prevent their being swamped by 
steamer wakes. The names they bear interest 
us, as betokening, perhaps, the proclivities of 
their owners. "Little Joe," "Little Jim," 
"Little Maggie," and like diminutives, are 
common here, as upon the towing-tugs and 
steam ferries of broader waters— and now and 
then we have, by contrast, "Xerxes," "Achil- 
les, " ' ' Hercules. " Sometimes the skiff is named 
after its owner's wife or sweetheart, as 
"Maggie G.," "Polly H.," or from the rustic 



254 On the Storied Ohio 

goddesses, "Pomona," "Flora," "Ceres;" on 
the Kentucky shore, we have noted ' * Stone- 
wall Jackson," and "Robert E. Lee," and 
one Ohio boat was labeled "Little Phil." 
Literature we found represented to-day, by 
" Octave Thanet" — the only case on record, 
for the Ohio-River "cracker" is not much 
given to books. Slang claims for its own, 
many of these knockabout craft — " U. Bet," 
"Git Thair," "Go it, Eli," "Whoa, Emma!" 
and nondescripts, like "Two Doves," "Poker 
Chip," and "Game Chicken," are not infre- 
quent. 

In these stately solitudes, towns are far be- 
tween. Enterprise, Ind. (755 miles), is an 
unpainted village with a dismal view — back 
of and around it, wide bottom lands, with 
hills in the far distance; up and down the 
river, precipitous banks of clay, with willow 
fringes on that portion of the shore which is 
not being cut by the impinging current. Scuf- 
fletown, Ky. {j6j miles), is uninviting. New- 
burgh, on the edge of a bluff, across the river 
in Indiana, is a ragged little place that has 
seen better days; but the backward view of 
Newburgh, from below Three-Mile Island, 
made a pretty picture, the whites and reds of 



Turkey-Buzzards 255 

the town standing out in sharp relief against 
the dark background of the hill. 

Green River (775 miles), a gentle, rustic 
stream, enters through the wide bottoms of 
Kentucky. We had difficulty in finding it in 
the wilderness of willows — might not have 
succeeded, indeed, had not the red smoke- 
stack of a small steamer suddenly appeared 
above the bushes. Soon, the puffing craft de- 
bouched upon the Ohio, and, quickly overtak- 
ing us, passed down toward Evansville. 

Green River Towhead, two miles below, 
claimed us for the night. There is a shanty, 
midway on the island, and at the lower end 
the landing of a railway-transfer. We have 
our camp at the upper end, in a bed of spot- 
less white sand, thick grown to dwarf willows. 
Entangled drift-wood lies about in monster 
heaps, lodged in depressions of the land, or 
against stout tree-trunks; a low bar of gravel 
connects our home with Green River Island, 
lying close against the Indiana bank; sand- 
flies freely joined us at dinner, and I hear, as 
I write, the drone of a solitary mosquito, — the 
first in many days; while upon the bar, at sun- 
set, a score of turkey-buzzards held silent 
council, some of them occasionally rising and 



256 On the Storied Ohio 

wheeling about in mid-air, then slowly light- 
ing and stretching their necks, and flapping 
their wings most solemnly, before rejoining 
the conference. 

Cypress Bend, Tuesday, 5th. — The tem- 
perature had materially fallen during the night, 
and the morning opened gray and hazy. 
Evansville, Ind. (783 miles), made a charming 
Turneresque study, as her steeples and factory 
chimneys developed through the mist. It is 
a fine, well-built town, of some fifty thousand 
inhabitants, with a beautiful little postorfice 
in the Gothic style — a refutation, this, of the 
well-worn assertion that there are no credits 
able government buildings in our small Amer- 
ican cities. A railway bridge here crosses the 
Ohio, numerous sawmills line the bank; alto- 
gether, there is business bustle, the like of 
which we have not seen since leaving Louis- 
ville. 

Henderson (795 miles) is a substantial Ken- 
tucky town of nine thousand souls, with large 
tobacco interests, we are told, ranking next 
to Louisville in this regard. Through the 
morning, the mist had been thickening. 
While we were passing beneath the railway 
bridge at Henderson, thunder sounded, and 



Audubon at Henderson 257 

the western sky suddenly blackened. Pulling 
rapidly in to the town shore, shelter was found 
beneath the overhanging deck of a deserted 
wharf-boat. We had just completed prepa- 
rations with the rubber blankets and ponchos, 
when the deluge came. But the sheltering 
deck was not water-tight; soon the rain came 
pouring in upon us through the uncaulked 
cracks, and we were nearly as badly off in our 
close-smelling quarters as in the open. How- 
ever, we were a merry party under there, with 
the Doctor giving us a touch of "Br'er Rab- 
bit," and the boy relating a fantastic dream 
he had had on the Towhead last night; while 
I told them the story of Audubon, whose name 
will ever be associated with Henderson. 

The great naturalist was in business at 
Louisville, early in the century; but in 18 12, 
he failed in this venture, and moved to Hen- 
derson, where his neighbors thought him a 
trifle daft, — and certainly he was a ne'er-do- 
well, wandering around the woods, with hair 
hanging down on his shoulders, a far-away 
look in his eyes, and communing with the 
birds. In 1818, the botanist Rafinesque, on 
the first of his several tramps down the Ohio 
valley, — he had a favorite saying, that the 
17 



258 On the Storied Ohio 

only way for a botanist to travel, was to 
walk, — stopped over at Henderson to visit this 
crazy fellow of whom he had heard. Raf- 
inesque had a hope that Audubon might buy 
some of his colored drawings; but when he 
saw the wonderful pictures which Audubon 
had made, he acknowledged that his own were 
inferior — a sore confession for Rafinesque, who 
was an egotist of the first water. Audubon 
had but humble quarters, for it was hard work 
in those days for him to keep the wolf from 
the door; nevertheless, he entertained the dis- 
tinguished traveler, whom he was himself 
destined to far eclipse. One night, a bat flew 
into Rafinesque's bedroom, and in driving it 
out he used his host's fine Cremona as a club, 
thus making kindling-wood of it. Two years 
later, still steeped in poverty, Audubon left 
Henderson. It was 1826 before he became 
known to the world of science, when little of 
his life was left in which to enjoy the fame at 
last awarded him. 

We had lunch on Henderson Island, three 
miles down, and for warmth walked briskly 
about on the strand, among the willow clumps. 
It rained again, after we had taken our seats 
in the boat, and the head-wind which sprang 



Fishermen's Tales 259 

up was not unwelcome, for it necessitated a 
right lively pull to make headway. W — and 
the Boy, in the stern-sheets, were not uncom- 
fortable when swathed to the chin in the 
blankets which ordinarily serve us as cushions. 

Ten miles below Henderson, was a little fleet 
of houseboats, lying in a thicket of willows along 
the Indiana beach. We stopped at one of 
them, and bought a small catfish for dinner. 
The fishermen seemed a happy company, in 
this isolated spot. The women were engaged 
in household work, but the men were spending 
the afternoon collected in the cabin of one of 
their number, who had recently arrived from 
Green River. While waiting for the fish to 
be caught in a live-box, I visited with the little 
band. It was a comfortable room, furnished 
rather better than the average shore cabin, 
and the Green River man's family of half-a- 
dozen were well-kept, pleasant-faced, and 
polite. Altogether it was a much more re- 
spectable houseboat company than any we 
have yet seen on the river. But the fish- 
stories which that Green River man tells, with 
an honest-like, open-eyed sobriety, would do 
credit to Munchausen. 

The rain, at first spasmodic, became at last 



260 On the Storied Ohio 

persistent. Two miles farther down, at Cy- 
press Bend (806 miles), we ran into an Indi- 
ana hill, where on a steep slope of yellow 
shale, all strewn with rocks, our tent was hur- 
riedly pitched. There was no driving of pegs 
into this stony base, so we weighted down the 
canvas with round-heads, and fastened our 
guys to bushes and boulders as best we might. 
Huddled around the little stove, under the fly, 
the crew dined sumptuously en course, from 
canned soup down to strawberries for dessert, — 
for Evansville is a good market. It is not 
always, we pilgrims fare thus high — the re- 
sources of Rome, Thebes, Bethlehem, Hercu- 
laneum, and the other classic towns with 
which the Ohio's banks are dotted, being none 
of the best. Some days, we are fortunate to 
have aught in our larder. 

Brown's Island, Wednesday, 6th. — This 
morning's camp-fire was welcome for its 
warmth. The sky has been clear, but a sharp, 
cold wind has prevailed throughout the day, 
quite counteracting the sun's rays; we noticed 
townsfolk going about in overcoats, their hands 
in their pockets. In the ox-bow curves, the 
breeze came in turn from every quarter, some- 



A Windy Day 261 

times dead ahead and again pushing us swiftly 
on. In seeking the lee shore, Pilgrim pursued 
a zigzag course, back and forth between the 
States, — now under the brow of towering clay 
banks, corrugated by the flood, and honey- 
combed by swallows, which in flocks screamed 
and circled over our heads; again, closely 
brushing the fringe of willows and sycamores 
and maples on low-lying shores. Thus did 
we for the most part paddle in placid water, 
while above us the wind whistled in the tree- 
tops, rustled the blooming elders and the tall 
grasses of the plain, and, out in the open river, 
caused white-caps to dance right merrily. 

We met at intervals to-day, several house- 
boats, the most of them bearing the inscription 
prescribed by the new Kentucky license law, 
which is now being enforced, the essential 
features of which inscription are the home and 
name of the owner, and the date at which 
the license expires. The standard of edu- 
cation among houseboaters is evinced by the 
legend borne by a trader's craft which we 
boarded near Slim Island: "Lisens exp.rs 
Maye the 24 1895." The young woman in 
charge, a slender creature in a brilliant red 
calico gown, with blue ribbons at the corsage, 



262 On the Storied Ohio 

had been but recently married to her lord, 
who was back in the country stirring up trade. 
She had few notions of business, and allowed 
us to put our own prices on such articles as 
we purchased. The stock was a curious med- 
ley — a few staple groceries, bacon and dried 
beef, candies, crockery, hardware, tobacco, 
a small line of patent medicines, in which 
blood-purifiers chiefly prevailed, bitters, ginger 
beer, and a glass case in which were displayed 
two or three women's straw hats, gaudily- 
trimmed. The woman said their custom was, 
to tie up to some convenient shore and ' i buy 
a little stuff o' the farmers, 'n' in that way 
trade springs up," and thus become known. 
Two or three weeks would exhaust any neigh- 
borhood, whereupon they would move on for 
a dozen miles or so. Late in the autumn, 
they select a comfortable beach, and lie by 
for the winter. 

Mt. Vernon, Ind. (819 miles), is on a high, 
rolling plain, with a rather pretty little court- 
house set in a park of grass, some good busi- 
ness buildings, and huge flouring-mills, which 
appear to be the leading industry. Another 
flouring-mill town, with the addition of the 
characteristic Kentucky distillery, is Union- 



The Wabash 263 

town (833 miles), on the southern shore — a 
bright, neat little city, backed by smooth, 
picturesque green hills. 

The feature of the day was the entrance, 
through a dreary stretch of clay banks, of the 
Wabash River (838 miles), which divides In- 
diana from Illinois. Three hundred and sixty 
yards wide at the mouth, about half the width 
of the Ohio, it is the most important of the 
latter's northern affluents, and pours into the 
main stream a swift-rushing body of clear, 
green water, which at first boldly pushes over 
to the heavily-willowed Kentucky shore the 
roily mess of the Ohio, and for several miles 
exerts a considerable influence in clarification. 
The Lower Wabash, flowing through a soft 
clay bottom, runs an erratic course, and its 
mouth is a variable location, so that the 
bounds of Illinois and Indiana, hereabout, 
fluctuate east and west according to the ex- 
igencies of the floods. The far-reaching bot- 
tom itself, however, is apparently of slight 
value, giving evidence, in the dreary clumps 
of dead timber, of being frequently inundated. 

An interesting stream is the Wabash, from 
an historical point of view. La Salle knew 
of it in 1677, and was planning to prosecute 



264 On the Storied Ohio 

his fur trade over the Maumee and the Wa- 
bash; but the Iroquois held the portage, and 
for nearly forty years thereafter forbade its 
use by whites. Joliet thought the Wabash 
the headwaters of what we know as the Lower 
Ohio, and in his map (1673) styled the latter 
the Wabash, down to its mouth. Vincennes, 
an old Wabash town, was one of the posts 
captured so heroically for the Americans by 
George Rogers Clark, during the Revolution- 
ary War. In 18 14, there was established at 
New Harmony, also on the Wabash, the com- 
munistic seat of the Harmonists, who had 
moved thither from Pennsylvania, to which, 
dissatisfied with the West, they returned ten 
years later. 

Numerous islands have to-day beautified 
the Ohio. Despite their inartistic names, 
Diamond and Slim are tipped at head and 
foot with charming banks and willowed sand, 
and each center is clothed in a luxurious for- 
est, rimmed by a gravelly beach piled high 
with drift and gnarled roots: the whole, with 
startling clearness, inversely reflected in the 
mirrored flood. Wabash Island, opposite the 
mouth of the great tributary, is an insular 
woodland several miles in length. 



Shawneetown 265 

Among the prettiest of these jewels stud- 
ding our silvery path, is the upmost of the 
little group known as Brown's Islands, on 
which we are passing the night. It was an 
easy landing on the hard sand, and a com- 
fortable carry to a level opening in the wil- 
lows, where we have a model camp with a 
great round sycamore block for a table; an 
Evansville newspaper does duty as a table- 
cloth, and two logs rolled alongside serve for 
seats. Four miles below, the smoke of Shaw- 
neetown (848 miles) rises lazily above the 
dark level line of woods; while across the 
river, in Kentucky, there is an unbroken for- 
est fringe, without sign of life as far as the 
eye can reach. A long glistening bar of sand 
connects our little island home with the Illi- 
nois mainland; upon it was being held, in the 
long twilight, that evening council of turkey- 
buzzards, which we so often witness when in 
an island camp. Sand-pipers went fearlessly 
about among them, bobbing their little tails 
with nervous vehemence; redbirds trilled their 
good-nights in the tree-tops; and, daintily 
wading in the sandy shallows, object lessons 
in patience, were great blue herons, carefully 
peering for the prey which never seems to be 



266 On the Storied Ohio 

found. As night closed in upon us, owls dis- 
mally hooted in the mainland woods, buzzards 
betook themselves to inland roosts, herons 
winged their stately flight to I know not 
where, and over on the Kentucky shore could 
faintly be heard the barking of dogs at the 
little "cracker" farmsteads hid deep in the 
lowland forest. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Shawneetown — Farm-houses on stilts — 
Cave-in-Rock — An island night. 

Half-Moon Bar, Thursday, June 7th. — A 
head-breeze prevailed all day, strong enough 
to fan us into a sense of coolness, but leaving 
the water as unruffled as a mill-pond; thus did 
we seem, in the vivid reflections of the early 
morning, to be sailing between double lines of 
shore, lovely in their groupings of luxuriant 
trees and tangled heaps of vine-clad drift. It 
was a hazy, mirage-producing atmosphere, the 
river appearing to melt away in space, and 
the ever-charming island heads looming un- 
supported in mid-air. From the woods, the 
piercing note of locusts filled the air as with 
the ceaseless rattle of pebbles against innu- 
merable window-panes. 

At a distance, Shawneetown appears as if 

built upon higher land than the neighboring 

bottom; but this proves, on approach, to be 

an optical illusion, for the town is walled in by a 

267 



268 On the Storied Ohio 

levee some thirty feet in height, above the top of 
which loom its chimneys and spires. Shawnee- 
town, laid out in 1808, soon became an im- 
portant post on the Lower Ohio, and indeed 
ranked with Kaskaskia as one of the principal 
Illinois towns, although in 18 17 it still only 
contained from thirty to forty log dwellings. 
During the reign of the Ohio-River bargemen,* 
it was notorious as the headquarters of the 
roughest elements in that boisterous class, and 
frequently the scene of most barbarous out- 
rages — " the odious receptacle," says a chron- 
icler of the time, "of filth and villany." 

In those lively days, which lasted with more 
or less vigor until about 1830, — by which time, 
steamboats had finally overcome popular pre- 
judice and gained the upper hand in river 
transportation, — the people of Shawneetown 
were largely dependent on the trade of the 
salt works of the neighboring Saline Reserve. 
The salt-licks — at which in early days the 
bones of the mammoth were found, as at Big 
Bone Lick — commenced a few miles below 
the town, and embraced a district of about 
ninety thousand acres. While Illinois was 

* See Chapter XIII. 



Buildings on Stilts 269 

still a Territory, these salines were rented by 
the United States to individuals, but were 
granted to the new State (18 18) in perpetuity. 
The trade, in time, decreased with the deca- 
dence of river traffic; and Shawneetown has 
since had but slow growth — it now being a 
dreary little place of three thousand inhab- 
itants, with unmistakable evidences of having 
long since seen its best days. 

The farmers upon the wide bottoms of the 
lower reaches now invariably have their dwel- 
lings, corn-cribs, and tobacco-sheds set upon 
posts, varying from five to ten feet high, ac- 
cording to the surrounding elevation above 
the normal river level. At present we are, as 
a rule, hemmed in by banks full thirty or forty 
feet in height above the present stage. After 
a hard climb up the steps which are frequently 
found cut into the clay, to facilitate access 
to the river, it is with something akin to awe 
that we look upon these buildings on stilts, 
for they bespeak, in times of great flood, a 
rise in the river of between fifty and sixty feet. 

Three miles above Saline River, I scrambled 
up to photograph a farm-house of this char- 
acter. In order to get the building within the 
field of the camera, it was necessary to mount 



270 On the Storied Ohio 

a cob-house of loose rails, which did duty as a 
pig-pen. A young woman of eighteen or 
twenty years, attired in a dazzling-red calico 
gown, came out on the front balcony to see 
the operation; and, for a touch of life, I held 
her in talk until the picture was taken. She 
was not at all averse to thus posing, and 
chatted as familiarly as though we were old 
friends. The water, my model said, came at 
least once a year to the main floor of the house, 
some ten feet above the level of the land, and 
forty feet above the normal river stage; ' ' every 
few years " it rose to the eaves of this story - 
and-a-half dwelling, when the family would 
embark in boats, hieing off to the back-lying 
hills, a mile-and-a-half away. An event of 
this sort seemed quite commonplace to the 
girl, and not at all to be viewed as a calamity. 
As in other houses of the bottom farmers of 
this district, there is no wall-paper, no plaster 
upon the walls, and little or nothing else to be 
injured by water. Their few household pos- 
sessions can readily be packed into a scow, 
together with the live-stock, and behold the 
family is ready, if need be, to float away to 
the ends of the earth. As a matter of fact, if 
they carry food enough with them, and a rain- 



In Egypt 271 

proof tent, their season on the hills is but a 
prolonged picnic. When the waters suffi- 
ciently subside, they float back again to their 
home; the river mud is scraped out of the 
rooms, the kitchen-stove rubbed up a bit, and 
soon everything is again at rights, with a fresh 
layer of alluvial deposit to fertilize the fields. 

Few of these small farmers own the lands 
they till; from Pittsburg down, the great ma- 
jority of Ohio River planters are but tenants. 
The old families that once owned the soil are 
living in the neighboring towns, or in other 
parts of the country, and renting out their 
acres to these cultivators. We were told that 
the rental fee around Owensboro is usually in 
kind, — fourteen bushels of good, salable corn 
being the rate per acre. In ' ' Egypt, " as 
Southern Illinois is called, the average rent is 
four or five dollars in money, except in years 
when the water remains long upon the ground, 
and thus shortens the season; then the fee is 
correspondingly reduced. The girl on the 
balcony averred that in 1893 it amounted to 
one-third the value of the average yield. 

The numerous huge stilted corn cribs we 
see are constructed so that wagons can drive 
up into them, and, after unloading in bins on 



272 On the Storied Ohio 

either side, descend another incline at the far 
end. Sometimes a portion of the crib is 
boarded up for a residence, with windows, 
and a little balcony which does double duty 
as a porch and a landing-stage for the boats 
in time of high water. Scattered about on 
the level are loosely-built sheds of rails, for 
stock, which practically live al fresco, so far 
as actual storm-shelter goes. 

Usually the flooded bottoms are denuded of 
trees, save perhaps a narrow fringe along the 
bank, and a few dead trunks scattered here and 
there; while back, a third or a half-mile from 
the river, lies a dense line of forest, far be- 
yond which rises the low rim of the basin. 
But just below Saline River (857 miles), a 
lazy little stream of a few rods' width, the 
hills, now perhaps eighty or a hundred feet in 
height, again approach to the water's edge; 
and henceforth to the mouth we are to have 
alternating semi-circular, wooded bottoms and 
shaly, often palisaded uplands, grown to scrub 
and vines much in the fashion of some of the 
middle reaches. A trading-boat was moored 
just within the Saline, where we stopped for 
lunch under a clump of sycamores. The 
owner obtains butter and eggs from the 



Cave-in-Rock 273 

farmers, in exchange for his varied wares, and 
sells them at a goodly profit to passing steam- 
ers, which will always stop when flagged. 

Approaching Cave-in-Rock, 111. (869 miles), 
the right bank is for several miles an almost con- 
tinuous palisade of lime-stone, thick-studded 
with black and brown flints. In the breaking 
down of this escarpment, popularly styled 
Battery Rocks, numerous caves have been 
formed, the largest of which gave the place 
its name. It is a rather low opening into the 
rock, perhaps two hundred feet deep, and the 
floor some twenty feet above the present level of 
the river; in times of flood, it is frequently so 
filled with water that boats enter, and thousands 
of silly people have, in two or three generations 
past, carved or painted their names upon the 
vaulted roof .* From this large entrance hall, 
a chimney-like hole in the roof leads to other 
chambers, said to be imposing and widely 
ramified — "not unlike a Gothic cathedral," 
said Ashe, an early English traveler (1806), 
who appears to have everywhere in these 
Western wilds sought the marvellous, and 

* " Scrawled over by that class of aspiring travelers who 
defile noble monuments with their worthless names." — Ir- 
ving, in The Alhambra. 
18 



274 On the Storied Ohio 

found it. About 1801, a band of robbers made 
these inner recesses their home, and fre- 
quently sallied hence to rob passing boats, 
and incidentally to murder the crews. As for 
the little hamlet of Cave-in-Rock, nestled in 
a break in the palisade, a few hundred yards 
below, it was, between 1801 and 1805, the 
seat of another species of brigandage — a land 
speculation, wherein schemers waxed rich 
from the confusion engendered by conflicting 
claims of settlers, the outgrowth of carelessly- 
phrased Indian treaties and overlapping French 
and English patents. From 1804 to 18 10, a 
Congressional committee was engaged in 
straightening out this weary tangle; and its 
decisions, ratified by Congress, are to-day the 
foundation of many land-titles in Indiana and 
Illinois. 

We are in camp to-night upon the Illinois 
shore, opposite Half-Moon Bar (872 miles), 
and a mile above Hurricane Island. Tower- 
ing above us are great sycamores, cypress, 
maples, and elms, and all about a dense jungle 
of grasses, vines, and monster weeds — the 
rank horse-weed being now some ten feet high, 
with a stem an inch in diameter; the dead 
stalks of last year's growth, in the broad roll- 



An Enchanted Land 275 

ing fields to our rear, indicate a possibility of 
sixteen feet, and an apparent desire to out- 
rival the corn. Cane-brake, too, is prevalent 
hereabout, with stalks two inches or more 
thick. The mulberries are reddening, the 
Doctor reports on his return with the Boy 
from a botanizing expedition, and black-caps 
are turning; while bergamont and vervain are 
among the plants newly added to the her- 
barium. 

Stewart's Island, Friday, 8th. — We arose 
this morning to find the tent as wet from dew 
and fog as if there had been a shower, and 
the bushes by the landing were sparkling with 
great beads of moisture. The bold, black 
head of Hurricane Island stood out with start- 
ling distinctness, framed in rolling fog; through 
a cloud-bank on the horizon, the sun was 
bursting with the dull glow of burnished cop- 
per. By the time of starting, the fog had 
lifted, and the sun swung clear in a steel-blue 
sky; but there was still a soft haze on land 
and river, which dreamily closed the ever- 
changing vistas, and we seemed to float through 
an enchanted land. 

The approach to Elizabethtown, 111. (877 



276 On the Storied Ohio 

miles), is picturesque; but of the dry little 
town of seven hundred souls, with its rocky, 
undulating streets set in a break in the line of 
palisades, very little is to be seen from the 
river. Quarrying for paving-stones appears 
to be the chief pursuit of the Elizabethans. 
At Rose Clare, 111., a string of shanties three 
miles below, are two idle plants of the Argyle 
Lead and Fluor-Spar Mining Co. Carrsville, 
Ky., is another arid, hillside hamlet, with 
striking escarpments stretching above and be- 
low for several miles. Mammoth boulders, a 
dozen or more feet in height, relics doubtless 
of once formidable cliffs, here line the river- 
side. The palisaded hills reappear in Illinois, 
commencing at Parkinson's Landing, a dreary 
little settlement on a waste of barren, stony 
slope flanking the perpendicular wall. 

Just above Golconda Island (890 miles), on 
the Illinois side, we were witness to a "meet" 
of farmers for a squirrel-hunt, a favorite amuse- 
ment in these parts. There were five men 
upon a side, all carrying guns; as we passed, 
they were shaking hands, preparatory to sep- 
arating for the battue. Upon the bank above, 
in a grove of cypress, pawpaw, and sycamore, 
their horses were standing, unhitched from the 



Squirrel-Hunters 277 

poles of the wagons in which they had been 
driven, and, tied to trees, feeding from boxes 
set upon the ground. It was pleasant to see 
that these people, who must lead dreary lives 
upon the malaria-stricken and flood-washed 
bottoms, occasionally take a holiday with a 
spice of rational adventure in it; although 
there is the probability that this squirrel-hunt 
may be followed to-night by a roystering at 
the village tavern, the losing side paying the 
score. 

We reached Stewart's Island (901 miles) at 
five o'clock, and went into camp upon the 
landing-beach of hard, white sand, facing 
Kentucky. The island is two miles long, the 
owner living in Bird's Point Landing, Ky. , 
just below us — a rather shabby but pictur- 
esquely-situated little village, at the base of 
pretty, wooded hills. A hundred and fifty 
acres of the island are planted to corn, and 
the owner's laborers — a white overseer and 
five blacks — are housed a half-mile above us, 
in a rude cabin half-hidden in a generous ma- 
ple grove. 

The white man soon came down to the 
strand, riding his mule, and both drank freely 
from the muddy river. He was a fairly-intel- 



278 On the Storied Ohio 

ligent young fellow, and proud of his mount — 
no need of lines, he said, for "this yer mule; 
ye on'y say 'gee!' and 'haw!' and he done git 
thar ev'ry time, sir-r! Tears to me, he jist 
done think it out to hisself, like a man would. 
Hit ain't no use try'n' boss that yere mule, 
he's thet ugly when he's sot on 't — but jist pat 
him on th' naick and say, ' So thar, Solomon!' 
and thar ain't no one knows how to act better 
'nhe." 

As we were at dinner, in the twilight, the 
five negroes also came riding down the angling 
roadway, in picturesque single file, singing 
snatches of camp-meeting songs in that weird 
minor key with which we are so familiar in ' 'ju- 
bilee" music. Across the river, a Kentucky 
darky, riding a mule along the dusky wood- 
land road at the base of the hills, and evidently 
going home from his work in the fields, was sing- 
ing at the top of his bent, possibly as a stim- 
ulus to failing courage. Our islanders shouted 
at him in derision. The shoreman's replies, 
which lacked not for spice, came clear and 
sharp across the half-mile of smooth water, 
and his tormentors quickly ceased chaffing. 
Having all drunk copiously, men and mules 
resumed their line of march up the bank, and 



An Island Night 279 

disappeared as they came, still chanting the 
crude melodies of their people. An hour later, 
we could hear them at the cabin, singing 
1 ' John Brown's Body " and other old friends — 
with the moon, bright and clear in its first 
quarter, adding a touch of romance to the 
scene. 



CHAPTER XXL 

The Cumberland and the Tennessee — 
Stately solitudes — Old Fort Mas- 
sac — Dead towns in Egypt — The last 
camp — Cairo. 

Opposite Metropolis, III. , Saturday, June 
9th. — As we were dressing this morning, at 
half-past five, the echoes were again awakened 
by the vociferous negro on the Kentucky 
shore, who was going out to his work again, 
as noisy as ever. One of our own black men 
walked down the bank, ostensibly to light his 
pipe at the breakfast fire, but really to satisfy 
a pardonable curiosity regarding us. The 
singing brother on the mainland appeared to 
amuse him, and he paused to listen, saying, 
'<Dat yere nigger, he got too loud voice!" 
Then, when he had left our camp and regained 
the top of the bank, he leaned upon his hoe 
and yelled: "Say, niggah, ober dere! whar 
you git dat mule?" 

280 



Repartee 28 1 

"Who you holl'rin' at, you brack island 
niggah?" was the quick reply. 

"You Ian' niggah, you tink you smart!" 

"Fse so smart, I done want no liv'n' on 
island, wi' gang boss, 'n not 'lowed go 'way!" 

The tuneful darky had evidently here 
touched a tender spot, for our man turned 
back into the field to his work; and the other, 
kicking the mule into action, trotted off to the 
tune of " Dar's a meet'n' here, to-night!" 

We went up into the field, to see the labor- 
ers cultivating corn. The sun was blazing 
hot, without a breath of air stirring, but the 
great black fellows seemed to mind it not, 
chattering away to themselves like magpies, 
and keeping up their conversation by shouts, 
when separated from each other at the ends 
of plow-rows. A natural levee, eight and ten 
feet high, and studded with large tree- willows, 
rims in the island farm like the edge of a basin. 
We were told that this served as a barrier 
only against the June "fresh," for the regular 
spring floods invariably swamp the place; but 
what is left within the bowl, when the outer 
waters subside, soon leaches through the sandy 
soil. 

After passing the pretty shores of Dog Isl- 



282 On the Storied Ohio 

and, not far below, the bold, dark headland 
of Cumberland Island soon bursts upon our 
view. We follow the narrow eastern channel, 
in order to greet the Cumberland River (909 
miles), which half-way down its island name- 
sake, — at the woe-begone little village of 
Smithland, Ky., — empties a generous flood 
into the Ohio, The Cumberland, perhaps 
a quarter-of-a-mile wide, debouches through 
high clay banks, which might readily be melted 
in the turbulent cross-currents produced by 
the mingling of the rivers; but to avoid this, 
the government engineers have built a wing- 
dam running out from the foot of the Cum- 
berland, nearly half-way into the main river. 
This quickly unites the two streams, and 
the reinforced Ohio is thereafter perceptibly 
widened. 

Tramp steamers are numerous, on these 
lower reaches. We have seen perhaps a dozen 
such to-day, stopping at the farm landings as 
well as at the crude and infrequent ham- 
lets, — mere notches of settlement in the 
wooded lines of shore, — doing a small busi- 
ness in chance cargoes and in passengers who 
flag them from the bank. A sultry atmos- 
phere has been with us through the day. The 



■ TflE W near Metropolis, Illinois, showing the character of 
* the lozver reaches. " These lozu, broad, heavily-timbered 
bottoms *' are frequently inundated. "Now and then the 
encroaching river has remained too long in some belt of forest, 
and we have great clumps of dead trees, which spri?ig aloft in 
stately picturesqueness, thickly clad to the limb- tops with 
Virginia creeper.'''' The shores are lined throughout with 
driftwood, which with each " rise ' ' is again caught up 
and given a fresh term of travel. 



<k 




The Tennessee 283 

glassy surface of the river has, when not lashed 
into foam by passing boats, dazzled the eyes 
most painfully. The hills, from below Stewart's 
Island, have receded on either side, generally 
leaving either low, broad, heavily-timbered 
bottoms, or high clay banks which stretch 
back wide plains of yellow and gray corn- 
land — frequently inundated, but highly pro- 
ductive. Now and then the encroaching river 
has remained too long in some belt of forest, 
and we have great clumps of dead trees, which 
spring aloft in stately picturesqueness, thickly- 
clad to the limb-tips with Virginia creeper. 
A bit of shaly hillside occasionally abuts upon 
the river, though less frequently than above; 
and often such a spur has lying at its feet a 
row of half-immersed boulders, delicately car- 
peted with mosses and with clinging vines. 

The Tennessee River (918 miles), the larg- 
est of the Ohio's tributaries, is, where it enters, 
about half the width of the latter. Coming 
down through a broad, forested bottom, with 
several pretty islands off its mouth, it presents 
a pleasing picture. Here again the govern- 
ment has been obliged to put in costly works 
to stop the ravages of the mingling torrents 
in the soft alluvial banks. The Ohio, with 



284 On the Storied Ohio 

the united waters of the Cumberland and the 
Tennessee, henceforth flows majestically to 
the Mississippi, a full mile wide between her 
shores. 

Paducah( 1 3, 000 inhabitants), next to Louis- 
ville Kentucky's most important river port, 
lies on a high plain just below the Tennessee. 
It is a stirring little city, with the usual large 
proportion of negroes, and the out-door busi- 
ness life everywhere met with in the South. 
Saw-mills, iron plants, and ship-yards line the 
bank; at the wharf are large steamers doing 
a considerable business up the Cumberland 
and Tennessee, and between Paducah and 
Cairo and St. Louis; and there is a consider- 
able ferry business to and from the Illinois 
suburb of Brooklyn. 

Seven miles below the Tennessee, on the 
Illinois side, we sought relief from the blazing 
sun within the mouth of Seven Mile Creek, 
which is cut deep through sloping banks of 
mud, and overhung by great sprawling syca- 
mores. These always interest us from the 
generosity of their height and girth, and from 
their great variety of color-tones, induced by 
the patchy scaling of the bark — soft grays, 
buffs, greens, and ivory whites prevailing. 



Fort Massac 285 

When sufficiently refreshed in this cool bower, 
we ventured once more into the fierce light of 
the open river, and two miles below shot into 
the broader and more inviting Massac Creek 
(928 miles), just as, of old, George Rogers 
Clark did with his little flotilla, when en route 
to capture Kaskaskia. Clark, in his Journal 
written long after the event, said that this 
creek is a mile above Fort Massac; his mem- 
ory failed him — as a matter of fact, the 
steep, low 7 hill of iron-stained gravel and clay, 
on which the old stronghold was built, is but 
two hundred yards below. * 

The French commander who, in October, 
1758, evacuated and burned Fort Duquesne 
on the approach of the English army under 
General Forbes, dropped down the Ohio for 
nearly a thousand miles, and built l ' a new 
fort on a beautiful eminence on the north bank 
of the river." But there was a fortified post 
on this hillock at a much earlier date (about 
171 1), erected as a headquarters for mission- 
aries, and to guard French fur-traders from 

* " In the evening of the same day I ran my Boats into a 
small Creek about one mile above the old Fort Missack; Re- 
posed ourselves for the night, and in the morning took a 
Rout to the Northv.est."' — Clark's letter to Mason. 



286 On the Storied Ohio 

marauding Cherokees; and Pownall's map notes 
one here in 175 1. This fort of 1758 was but 
an enlarged edition of the old. The new 
stronghold, with a garrison of a hundred men, 
was the last built by the French upon the Ohio, 
and it was occupied by them until they evac- 
uated the country in 1763. England does not 
appear to have made any attempt to repair 
and occupy the works then destroyed by the 
French, although urged to do so by her mili- 
tary agents in the West. Had they held Fort 
Massac, no doubt Clark's expedition to capture 
the Northwest for the Americans might easily 
have been nipped in the bud; as it was, the 
old fortress was a ruin when he "reposed" on 
the banks of the creek at its feet. 

When, in 1793- 1794, the French agent 
Genet was fomenting his scheme for capturing 
Louisiana and Florida from Spain, by the aid 
of Western filibusters, old Fort Massac was 
thought of as a rallying-point and base of sup- 
plies; but St. Clair's proclamation of March 
24, 1794, ordering General Wayne to restore 
and garrison the place, for the purpose of pre- 
venting the proposed expedition from passing 
down the river, ended the conspiracy, and Genet 
left the country. A year later, Spain, who had at 



Spain's Intrigues 287 

intervals sought to detach the Westerners from 
the Union, and ally them with her interests 
beyond the Mississippi, renewed her attempts 
at corrupting the Kentuckians, and gained to 
her cause no less a man than George Rogers 
Clark himself. Among other designs, Fort 
Massac was to be captured by the adventurers, 
whom Spain was to supply with the sinews of 
war. There was much mysterious correspond- 
ence between the latter's corruption agent, 
Thomas Power, and the American General 
Wilkinson, at Detroit; but finally Power, in 
disguise, was sent out of the country under 
guard, by way of Fort Massac, and his escape 
into Spanish territory practically ended this 
interesting episode in Western history. The 
fort was occupied as a military post by our 
government until the close of the War of 
1 81 2-1 5; what we see to-day, are the ruins of 
the establishment then abandoned. 

No doubt the face of this rugged promon- 
tory of gravel has, within a century, suffered 
much from floods; but the remains of the 
earthwork on the crest of the cliff, some fifty 
feet above the present river-stage, are still 
easily traceable throughout. The fort was 
about forty yards square, with a bastion at 



288 On the Storied Ohio 

each corner. There are the remains of an un- 
stoned well near the center; the ditch sur- 
rounding the earthwork is still some two-and- 
a-half or three feet below the surrounding 
level, and the breastwork about two feet above 
the inner level; no doubt, palisades once sur- 
mounted the work, and were relied upon as the 
chief protection from assault. The grounds, 
a pleasant grassy grove several acres in extent, 
are now enclosed by a rail fence, and neatly 
maintained as a public park by the little city 
of Metropolis, which lies not far below. It 
was a commanding view of land and river, 
which was enjoyed by the garrison of old Fort 
Massac. Up stream, there is a straight stretch 
of eleven miles to the mouth of the Tennessee; 
both up and down, the shore lines are under 
full survey, until they melt away in the dis- 
tance. No enemy could well surprise the 
holders of this key to the Lower Ohio. 

Our camp is on the sandy beach opposite 
Metropolis, and two hundred yards below the 
Kentucky end of the ferry. Behind us lies a 
deep forest, with sycamores six and eight feet 
in diameter; a country road curving off through 
the woods, to the sparse rustic settlement lying 
some two miles in the interior — on higher 



Opposite Metropolis 289 

ground than this wooded bottom, which is an- 
nually overflowed. Now and then the bluster- 
ing little steam-ferry comes across to land 
Kentucky farm-folk and their mules, going 
home from a Saturday's shopping in Metrop- 
olis. Occasionally a fisherman passes, lagging 
on his oars to scan us and our quarters; and 
from one of them, we purchased a fish. As 
the still, cool night crept on, Metropolis was 
astir; across the mile of intervening water, 
darted tremulous shafts of light; we heard 
voices singing and laughing, a fiddle in its 
highest notes, the purring of a stationary en- 
gine, and the bay and yelp of countless dogs. 
Later, a packet swooped down with smothered 
roar, and threw its electric search-light on the 
city wharf, revealing a crowd of negroes gath- 
ered there, like moths in the radiance of a 
candle; there were gay shouts, and a mad 
scampering — we could see it all, as plainly as 
if in ordinary light it had been but a third of 
the distance; and then the roustabouts struck 
up a weird song as they ran out the gang- 
plank, and, laden with boxes and bales, began 
swarming ashore, like a procession of black 
ants carrying pupa cases. 
19 



290 On the Storied Ohio 

Mound City Towhead, Sunday, 10th. — 
During the night, burglarious pigs would have 
raided our larder, but the crash of a falling 
kettle wakened us suddenly, as did geese the 
ancient Romans. The Doctor and I sallied 
forth in our pajamas, with clods of clay in 
hand, to send the enemy flying back into the 
forest, snorting and squealing with baffled 
rage. 

We were afloat at half -past seven, under an 
unclouded sky, with the sun sharply reflected 
from the smooth surface of the river, and the 
temperature rapidly mounting. 

The Fort Massac ridge extends down stream 
as far as Mound City, but soon degenerates 
into a ridge of clay varying in height from 
twenty-five to fifty feet above the water level. 
Upon the low-lying bottom of the Kentucky 
shore, is still an interminable dark line of 
forest. The settlements are meager, and now 
wholly in Illinois: For instance, Joppa (936 
miles), a row of a half-dozen unpainted, dilap- 
idated buildings, chiefly stores and abandoned 
warehouses, bespeaking a river traffic of the 
olden time, that has gone to decay; a hot, 
dreary, baking spot, this Joppa, as it lies 
sprawling upon the clay ridge, flanked by a 



Fort Wilkinson 291 

low, wide gravel beach, on which gaunt, bell- 
ringing cows are wandering, eating the leaves 
of fallen trees, for lack of better pasturage. 
Our pilot map, of sixty years ago, records the 
presence of Wilkinsonville (942 miles), on 
the site of old Fort Wilkinson of the War of 
1 8 12-15, but few along the banks appear to 
have ever heard of it; however, after much 
searching, we found the place for ourselves, 
on an eminence of fifty feet, with two or three 
farm-houses as the sole relics of the old estab- 
lishment. Caledonia (Olmstead P. O.), nine 
miles down, consists of several large buildings 
on a hill set well back from the river. Mound 
City (959 miles), — the ' ' America " of our time- 
worn map, — in whose outskirts we are camped 
to-night, is a busy town with furniture fac- 
tories, lumber mills, ship-yards, and a railway 
transfer. Below that, stretches the vast ex- 
tent of swamp and low woodland on which 
Cairo (967 miles) has with infinite pains been 
built — like "brave little Holland," holding 
her own against the floods solely by virtue of 
her encircling dike. 

Houseboats have been few, to-day, and they 
of the shanty order and generally stranded 
high upon the beach. One sees now and then, 



292 On the Storied Ohio 

on the Illinois ridge, the cheap log or frame 
house of a "cracker," the very picture of des- 
olate despair; but on the Kentucky shore are 
few signs of life, for the bottom lies so low 
that it is frequently inundated, and settlement 
ventures no nearer than two or three miles 
from the riverside. A fisherman comes occa- 
sionally into view, upon this wide expanse of 
wood and water and clay-banks; sometimes 
we hail him in passing, always getting a re- 
spectful answer, but a stare of innocent curi- 
osity. 

Our last home upon the Ohio is facing the 
Kentucky shore, on the cleanly sand-beach of 
Mound City Towhead, a small island which 
in times of high water is but a bar. The tent 
is screened in a willow clump; just below us, 
on higher ground, sycamores soar heaven- 
ward, gayly festooned with vines, hiding from 
us Mound City and the Illinois mainland. 
Across the river, a Kentucky negro is singing 
in the gloaming; but it is over a mile away, 
and, while the tune is plain, the words are 
lost. Children's voices, and the bay of 
hounds, come wafted to us from the northern 
shore. A steamer's wake rolls along our isl- 
and strand, dangerously near the camp-fire; 



The Last Night 293 

the river is still falling, however, and we no 
longer fear the encroachments of the flood. 
The Doctor and I found a secluded nook, 
where in the moonlight we took our final 
plunge. 

It is sad, this bidding good-bye to the stream 
which has floated us so merrily for a thousand 
miles, from the mountains down to the plain. 
We elders linger long by the last camp-fire, 
to talk in fond reminiscence of the six weeks 
afloat; while the Boy no doubt dreams peace- 
fully of houseboats and fishermen, of gigantic 
bridges and flashing steel-plants, of coal-mines 
and oil-wells, of pioneers and Indians, and all 
that — of six weeks of kaleidoscopic sensations, 
at an age when the mind is keenly active, and 
the heart open to impressions which can 
never be dimmed so long as his little life shall 
last. 

Cairo, Monday, 1 ith. — At our island camp, 
last night, we were but nine miles from the 
mouth of the Ohio, a distance which could 
easily have been made before sundown; but 
we preferred to reach our destination in the 
morning, the better to arrange for railway 
transportation, hence our agreeable pause up- 
on the Towhead. 



294 On the Storied Ohio 

Before embarking for the last run, this 
morning, we made a neat heap on the beach, 
of such of our stores, edible and wearable, as 
had been requisite to the trip, but were not 
worth the cost of sending home. Feeling 
confident that some passing fisherman would 
soon be tempted ashore to inspect this curi- 
ous landmark, and yet might be troubled by 
nice scruples as to the policy of appropriating 
the find, we conspicuously labeled it: " Aban- 
doned by the owners! The finder is welcome 
to the lot." 

Quickly passing Mound City, now bustling 
with life, Pilgrim closely skirted the monoto- 
nous clay-banks of Illinois, swept rapidly un- 
der the monster railway bridge which stalks 
high above the flood, and loses itself over the 
tree-tops of the Kentucky bottom, and at a 
quarter-past eight o'clock was pulled up at 
Cairo, with the Mississippi in plain sight over 
there, through the opening in the forest. In 
another hour or two, she will be housed in a 
box-car; and we, her crew, having again 
donned the garb of landsmen, will be speed- 
ing toward our northern home, this pilgrimage 
but a memory. 

Such a memory! As we dropped below the 



An Unwelcome End 295 

Towhead, the Boy, for once silent, wistfully 
gazed astern. When at last Pilgrim had been 
hauled upon the railway levee, and the Doctor 
and I had gone to summon a shipping clerk, 
the lad looked pleadingly into W — 's face. 
In tones half-choked with tears, he expressed 
the sentiment of all: "Mother, is it really 
ended ? Why can't we go back to Browns- 
ville, and do it all over again ?" 



APPENDIX A. 

Historical outline of Ohio Valley 

SETTLEMENT. v 

Englishmen had no sooner set foot upon our 
continent, than they began to penetrate inland 
with the hope of soon reaching the Western 
Ocean, which the coast savages, almost as 
ignorant of the geography of the interior as 
the Europeans themselves, declared lay just 
beyond the mountains. In 1586, we find 
Ralph Lane, governor of Raleigh's ill-fated 
colony, leading his men up the Roanoke River 
for a hundred miles, only to turn back dis- 
heartened at the rapids and falls, which neces- 
sitated frequent portages through the forest 
jungles. Twenty years later (1606), Christo- 
pher Newport and the redoubtable John Smith, 
of Jamestown, ascended the James as far as 
the falls — now Richmond, Va. ; and Newport 
himself, the following year, succeeded in reach- 
ing a point forty miles beyond, but here again 
was appalled by the difficulties and returned. 
296 



Historical Outline 297 

There was, after this, a deal of brave talk 
about scaling the mountains; but nothing 
further was done until 1650, when Edward 
Bland and Edward Pennant again tried the 
Roanoke, though without penetrating the wil- 
derness far beyond Lane's turning point. It 
is recorded that, in 1669, John Lederer, an 
adventurous German surgeon, commissioned 
as an explorer by Governor Berkeley, as- 
cended to the summit of the Blue Ridge, in 
Madison County, Va. ; but although he was 
once more on the spot the following season, 
with a goodly company of horsemen and In- 
dians, and had a bird's-eye view of the over- 
mountain country, he does not appear to 
have descended into the world of woodland 
which lay stretched between him and the set- 
ting sun. It seems to be well established that 
the very next year (1671), a party under Abra- 
ham Wood, one of Governor Berkeley's major- 
generals, penetrated as far as the Great Falls 
of the Great Kanawha, only eighty miles from 
the Ohio — doubtless the first English explora- 
tion of waters flowing into the latter river. 
The Great Kanawha was, by Wood himself, 
called New River, but the geographers of the 
time styled it Wood's. The last title was 



298 On the Storied Ohio 

finally dropped; the stream above the mouth 
of the Gauley is, however, still known as New. 
These several adventurers had now demon- 
strated that while the waters beyond the 
mountains were not the Western Ocean, they 
possibly led to such a sea; and it came to be 
recognized, too, that the continent was not as 
narrow as had up to this time been supposed. 

Meanwhile, the French of Canada were 
casting eager eyes toward the Ohio, as a gate- 
way to the continental interior. But the 
French-hating Iroquois held fast the upper 
waters of the Mohawk, Delaware, and Susque- 
hanna, and the long but narrow watershed 
sloping northerly to the Great Lakes, so that 
the westering Ohio was for many years sealed 
to New France. An important factor in Amer- 
ican history this, for it left the great valley 
practically free from whites while the English 
settlements were strengthening on the sea- 
board; when at last the French were ready 
aggressively to enter upon the coveted field, 
they had in the English colonists formidable 
and finally successful rivals. 

It is believed by many, and the theory is 
not unreasonable, that the great French fur- 
trader and explorer, La Salle, was at the Falls 



Historical Outline 299 

of the Ohio (site of Louisville) "in the autumn 
or early winter of 1669." How he got there, 
is another question. Some antiquarians be- 
lieve that he reached the Alleghany by way 
of the Chautauqua portage, and descended the 
Ohio to the Falls; others, that he ascended 
the Maumee from Lake Erie, and, descending 
the Wabash, thus discovered the Ohio. It 
was reserved for the geographer Franquelin to 
give, in his map of 1688, the first fairly-accu- 
rate idea of the Ohio's path; and Father Hen- 
nepin's large map of 1697 showed that much 
had meanwhile been learned about the river. 
No doubt, by this time, the great waterway 
was well-known to many of the most adven- 
turous French and English fur-traders, possibly 
better to the latter than to the former; unfor- 
tunately, these men left few records behind 
them, by which to trace their discoveries. As 
early as 1684, we incidentally hear of the Ohio 
as a principal route for the Iroquois, who 
brought peltries "from the direction of the 
Illinois" to the English at Albany, and the 
French at Quebec. Two years after this, ten 
English trading-canoes, loaded with goods, 
were seen on Lake Erie by French agents, 
who in great alarm wrote home to Quebec 



300 On the Storied Ohio 

about them. Writes De Nonville to Seignelay, 
"I consider it a matter of importance to pre- 
clude the English from this trade, as they 
doubtless would entirely ruin ours — as well by 
the cheaper bargains they would give the In- 
dians, as by attracting to themselves the French 
of our colony who are in the habit of resorting 
to the woods." 

Herein lay the gist of the whole matter: 
The legalized monopoly granted to the great 
fur-trade companies of New France, with the 
official corruption necessary to create and per- 
petuate that monopoly, made the French trade 
an expensive business, consequently goods were 
dear. On the other hand, the trade of the 
English was untrammeled, and a lively com- 
petition lowered prices. The French cajoled 
the Indians, and fraternized with them in their 
camps; whereas, the English despised the sav- 
ages, and made little attempt to disguise their 
sentiments. The French, while claiming all 
the country west of the Alleghanies, cared 
little for agricultural colonization; they would 
keep the wilderness intact, for the fostering of 
wild animals, upon the trade in whose furs 
depended the welfare of New France — and 
this, too, was the policy of the savage. By 



Historical Outline 301 

English statesmen at home, our continental 
interior was also chiefly prized for its forest 
trade, which yielded rich returns for the mer- 
chant adventurers of London. The policies 
of the English colonists and of their general 
government were ever clashing. The latter 
looked upon the Indian trade as an entering 
wedge; they thought of the West as a place 
for growth. Close upon the heels of the 
path-breaking trader, went the cattle-raiser, 
and, following him, the agricultural settler 
looking for cheap, fresh, and broader lands. 
No edicts of the Board of Trade could repress 
these backwoodsmen; savages could and did 
beat them back for a time, but the annals of 
the border are lurid with the bloody struggle 
of the borderers for a clearing in the Western 
forest. The greater part of them were Scotch- 
Irish from Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Caro- 
linas — a hardy race, who knew not defeat. 
Steadily they pushed back the rampart of 
savagery, and won the Ohio valley for civiliza- 
ation. 

The Indian early recognized the land-grab- 
bing temper of the English, and felt that a 
struggle to the death was impending. The 
French browbeat their savage allies, and, easily 



302 On the Storied Ohio 

inflaming their passions, kept the body of them 
almost continually at war with the English — 
the Iroquois excepted, not because the latter 
were English-lovers, or did not understand 
the aim of English colonization, but because 
the earliest French had won their undying 
enmity. Amidst all this weary strife, the In- 
dian, a born trader who dearly loved a bar- 
gain, never failed to recognize that the goods 
of his French friends were dear, and that those 
of his enemies, the English, were cheap. We 
find frequent evidences that for a hundred 
years the tribesmen of the Upper Lakes car- 
ried on an illicit trade with the hated Eng- 
lish, whenever the usually-wary French were 
thought to be napping. 

It is certain that English forest traders were 
upon the Ohio in the year 1700. In 171 5, — 
the year before Governor Spotswood of Vir- 
ginia, "with much feasting and parade," made 
his famous expedition over the Blue Ridge, — 
there was a complaint that traders from Car- 
olina had reached the villages on the Wabash, 
and were poaching on the French preserves. 
French military officers built little log stock- 
ades along that stream, and tried in vain to 
induce the Indians of the valley to remove to 



Historical Outline 303 

St. Joseph's River, out of the sphere of Eng- 
lish influence. Everywhere did French traders 
meet English competitors, who were not to be 
frightened by orders to move off the field. 
New France, therefore, determined to connect 
Canada and Louisiana by a chain of forts 
throughout the length of the Mississippi basin, 
which should not only secure untrammeled 
communication between these far-separated 
colonies, but aid in maintaining French su- 
premacy throughout the region. Yet in 1725 
we still hear of "the English from Carolina" 
busily trading with the Miamis under the very 
shadow of the guns of Fort Ouiatanon (near 
Lafayette, Ind.), and the French still vainly 
scolding thereat. What was going on upon 
the Wabash, was true elsewhere in the Ohio 
basin, as far south as the Creek towns on the 
sources of the Tennessee. 

About this time, Pennsylvania and Virginia 
began to exhibit interest in their own over- 
lapping claims to lands in the country north- 
west of the Ohio. Those colonies were now 
settled close to the base of the mountains, and 
there was heard a popular clamor for pastures 
new. French ownership of the over-moun- 
tain region was denied, and in 1728 Pennsyl- 



304 On the Storied Ohio 

vania "viewed with alarm the encroachments 
of the French." The issue was now joined ; 
both sides claimed the field, but, as usual, the 
contest was at first among the rival forest 
traders. In the Virginia and Pennsylvania 
capitals, the transmontane country was still 
a misty region. In 1729, Col. William Byrd, 
an authority on things Virginian, was able to 
write that nothing was then known in that 
colony of the sources of the Potomac, Roan- 
oke, and Shenandoah. That very same year, 
Chaussegros de Lery, chief engineer of New 
France, went with a detachment of troops 
from Lake Erie to Chautauqua Lake, and 
proceeded thence by Conewango Creek and 
Alleghany River to the Ohio, which he care- 
fully surveyed down to the mouth of the 
Great Miami. It was not until 1736 that 
Col. William Mayo, in laying out the boun- 
daries of Lord Fairfax's generous estate, dis- 
covered in the Alleghanies the head-spring of 
the Potomac, where ten years later was planted 
the famous " Fairfax Stone," the southwest 
point of the boundary between Virginia and 
Maryland. 

Affairs moved slowly in those days. New 
France was corrupt and weak, and the Eng- 



Historical Outline 305 

lish colonists, unaided by the home govern- 
ment, were not strong. For many years, 
nothing of importance came out of this rivalry 
of French and English in the Ohio Valley, 
save the petty quarrels of fur-traders, and the 
occasional adventure of some Englishman 
taken prisoner by Indians in a border foray, 
and carried far into the wilderness to meet 
with experiences the horror of which, as 
preserved in their published narratives, to 
this day causes the blood of the reader to 
curdle. 

Now and then, there were voluntary adven- 
turers into these strange lands. Such were 
John Howard, John Peter Sailing, and two 
other Virginians who, the story goes, went 
overland (1740 or 1741) under commission of 
their inquisitive governor, to explore the coun- 
try to the Mississippi. They went down Coal 
and Wood's Rivers to the Ohio, which in Sal- 
ling's journal is called the "Alleghany." Fi- 
nally, a party of French, negroes, and Indians 
took them prisoners and carried them to New 
Orleans, where on meager fare they were held 
in prison for eighteen months. They escaped 
at last, and had many curious adventures by 
land and sea, until they reached home, from 



306 On the Storied Ohio 

which they had been absent two years and 
three months. There are now few countries 
on the globe where a party of travelers could 
meet with adventures such as these. 

At last, the plot thickened; the tragedy was 
hastened to a close. France now formally 
asserted her right to all countries drained by 
streams emptying into the St. Lawrence, the 
Great Lakes, and the Mississippi. This vast 
empire would have extended from the comb 
of the Rockies on the west — discovered in 
1743 by the brothers La Verendrye — to the 
crest of the Appalachians on the east, thus 
including the western part of New York and 
New England. The narrow strip of the At- 
lantic coast alone would have been left to the 
domination of Great Britain. The demand 
made by France, if acceded to, meant the 
death-blow to English colonization on the 
American mainland; and yet it was made not 
without reason. French explorers, mission- 
aries, and fur-traders had, with great enter- 
prise and fortitude, swarmed over the entire 
.region, carrying the flag, the religion, and the 
commerce of France into the farthest forest 
wilds; while the colonists of their rival, busy in 
solidly welding their industrial common- 



Historical Outline 307 

wealths, had as yet scarcely peeped over the 
Alleghany barrier. 

It was asserted on behalf of Great Britain, 
that the charters of her coast colonies carried 
their bounds far into the West; further, that 
as, by the treaty of Utrecht (171 3), France 
had acknowledged the suzerainty of the British 
king over the Iroquois confederacy, the Eng- 
lish were entitled to all lands " conquered" by 
those Indians, whose war-paths had extended 
from the Ottawa River on the north to the 
Carolinas on the south, and whose forays 
reached alike to the Mississippi and to New 
England. In this view was made, in 1744, the 
famous treaty at Lancaster, Pa., whereat the 
Iroquois, impelled by rum and presents, pre- 
tended to give to the English entire control of 
the Ohio Valley, under the claim that the for- 
mer had in various encounters conquered the 
Shawanese of that region and were therefore 
entitled to it. It is obvious that a country 
occasionally raided by marauding bands of 
savages, whose homes are far away, cannot 
properly be considered theirs by conquest. 

Meanwhile, both sides were preparing to 
occupy and hold the contested field. New 
France already had a weak chain of water- 



308 On the Storied Ohio 

side forts and commercial stations, — the ren- 
dezvous of fur-traders, priests, travelers, and 
friendly Indians, — extending, with long inter- 
vening stretches of savage-haunted wilderness, 
through the heart of the continent, from Lower 
Canada to her outlying post of New Orleans. 
It is not necessary here to enter into the de- 
tails of the ensuing French and Indian War, 
the story of which Parkman has told us so 
well. Suffice it briefly to mention a few only 
of its features, so far as they affect the Ohio 
itself. 

The Iroquois, although concluding with the 
English this treaty of Lancaster, ''on which, 
as a corner-stone, lay the claim of the colonists 
to the West," were by this time, as the result 
of wily French diplomacy, growing suspicious 
of their English protectors; at the same time, 
having on several occasions been severely 
punished by the French, they were less ran- 
corous in their opposition to New France. 
For this reason, just as the English were get- 
ting ready to make good their claim to the 
Ohio by actual colonization, the Iroquois began 
to let in the French at the back door. In 
1749, Galissoniere, then governor of New 
France, dispatched to the great valley a party 



Historical Outline 309 

of soldiers under Celoron de Bienville, with 
directions to conduct a thorough exploration, 
to bury at the mouths of principal streams 
lead plates graven with the French claim, — a 
custom of those days, — and to drive out Eng- 
lish traders. Celoron proceeded over the 
Lake Chautauqua route, from Lake Erie to 
the Alleghany River, and thence down the 
Ohio to the Miami, returning to Lake Erie 
over the old Maumee portage. English traders, 
who could not be driven out, were found swarm- 
ing into the country, and his report was dis- 
couraging. The French realized that they 
could not maintain connection between New 
Orleans and their settlements on the St. Law- 
rence, if driven from the Ohio valley. The 
governor sent home a plea for the shipment of 
ten thousand French peasants to settle the 
region; but the government at Paris was just 
then as indifferent to New France as was King 
George to his colonies, and the settlers were 
not sent. 

Meanwhile, the English were not idle. The 
first settlement they made west of the moun- 
tains, was on New River, a branch of the 
Kanawha (1748); in the same season, several 
adventurous Virginians hunted and made land- 



310 On the Storied Ohio 

claims in Kentucky and Tennessee. Before 
the close of the following year (1749), there 
had been formed, for fur-trading and colonizing 
purposes, the Ohio Company, composed of 
wealthy Virginians, among whom were two 
brothers of Washington. King George granted 
the company five hundred thousand acres, 
south of and along the Ohio River, on which 
they were to plant a hundred families and 
build and maintain a fort. As a base of sup- 
plies, they built a fortified trading-house at 
Will's Creek (now Cumberland, Md.), near 
the head of the Potomac, and developed a 
trail ("Nemacolin's Path"), sixty miles long, 
across the Laurel Hills to the mouth of Red- 
stone Creek, on the Monongahela, where was 
built another stockade (1752). 

Christopher Gist, a famous backwoodsman, 
was sent (1750), the year after Celoron's ex- 
pedition, to explore the country as far down 
as the falls of the Ohio, and select lands for 
the new company. Gist's favorable report 
greatly stimulated interest in the Western 
country. In his travels, he met many Scotch- 
Irish fur-traders who had passed into the West 
through the mountain valleys of Pennsylvania, 
Virginia, and the Carolinas. His negotiations 



Historical Outline 3 1 1 

with the natives were of great value to the 
English cause. 

It was early seen, by English and French 
alike, that an immense advantage would accrue 
to the nation first in possession of what is now 
the site of Pittsburg, the meeting-place of the 
Monongahela and Alleghany rivers to form the 
Ohio — the ''Forks of the Ohio," as it was 
then called. In the spring of 1753, a French 
force occupied the new fifteen-mile portage 
route between Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.) and 
French Creek, a tributary of the Alleghany. 
On the banks of French Creek they built Fort 
Le Boeuf, a stout log-stockade. It had been 
planned to erect another fort at the Forks of 
the Ohio, one hundred and twenty miles be- 
low; but disease in the camp prevented the 
completion of the scheme. 

What followed is familiar to all who have 
taken any interest whatever in Western his- 
tory. In November, Governor Dinwiddie, of 
Virginia, sent one of his major-generals, young 
George Washington, with Gist as a companion, 
to remonstrate with the French at Le Bceuf 
for occupying land ' ' so notoriously known to 
be the property of the Crown of Great Britain." 
The French politely turned the messengers 



312 On the Storied Ohio 

back. In the following April (1754), Wash- 
ington set out with a small command, by the 
way of Will's Creek, to forcibly occupy the 
Forks. His advance party were building a 
fort there, when the French appeared and 
easily drove them off. Then followed Wash- 
ington's defeat at Great Meadows (July 4). 
The French were now supreme at their new 
Fort Duquesne. The following year, General 
Braddock set out from Virginia, also by Ne- 
macolin's Path; but, on that fateful ninth of 
July, fell in the slaughter-pen which had been 
set for him at Turtle Creek by the Indians of 
the Upper Lakes, under the leadership of a 
French fur-trader from far-off Wisconsin. 

From the time of Braddock's defeat until 
the close of the war, French traders, with 
savage allies, poured the vials of their wrath 
upon the encroaching settlements of the Eng- 
lish backwoodsmen. Nemacolin's Path, now 
known as Braddock's Road, made for the In- 
dians of the Ohio an easy pathway to the 
English borders of Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
and Maryland. In the parallel valleys of the 
Alleghanies was waged a partisan warfare, 
which in bitterness has probably not had its 
equal in all the long history of the efforts of 



Historical Outline 313 

expanding civilization to beat down the encir- 
cling walls of barbarism. In 1758, Canada 
was attacked by several English expeditions, 
the most of which were successful. One of 
these was headed by General John Forbes, 
and directed against Fort Duquesne. After a 
remarkable forest march, overcoming mighty 
obstacles, Forbes arrived at his destination to 
find that the French had blown up the fortifi- 
cations, some of the troops retreating to Lake 
Erie and others to rehabilitate Fort Massac on 
the Lower Ohio. 

Thus England gained possession of the val- 
ley. New France had been cut in twain. 
The English Fort Pitt commanded the Forks 
of the Ohio, and French rule in America was 
now doomed. The fall of Quebec soon fol- 
lowed (1759), then of Montreal (1760); and 
in 1763 was signed the Treaty of Paris, by 
which England obtained possession of all the 
territory east of the Mississippi River, except 
the city of New Orleans and a small outlying 
district. In order to please the savages of the 
interior, and to cultivate the fur-trade, — per- 
haps also, to act as a check upon the westward 
growth of the too-ambitious coast colonies, — 
King George III. took early occasion to com- 



314 On the Storied Ohio 

mand his "loving subjects" in America not to 
purchase or settle lands beyond the mountains, 
"without our especial leave and license." It 
is needless to say that this injunction was not 
obeyed. The expansion of the English col- 
onies in America was irresistible; the Great 
West was theirs, and they proceeded in due 
time to occupy it. 

Long before the close of the French and 
Indian War, English colonists — whom we will 
now, for convenience, call Americans — had 
made agricultural settlements in the Ohio 
basin. As early as 1752, we have seen, the 
Redstone fort was built. In 1753, the French 
forces, on retiring from Great Meadows, burned 
several log cabins on the Monongahela. The 
interesting story of the colonizing of the Red- 
stone district, at the western end of Brad- 
dock's Road, has been outlined in Chapter I. 
of the text; and it has been shown, in the 
course of the narrative of the pilgrimage, how 
other districts were slowly settled in the face 
of savage opposition. Although driven back 
in numerous Indian wars, these American bor- 
derers had come to the Ohio valley to stay. 

We have seen the early attempt of the Ohio 
Company to settle the valley. Its agents 



Historical Outline 315 

blazed the way, but the French and Indian 
War, and the Revolution soon following, 
tended to discourage the aspirations of the 
adventurers, and the organization finally 
lapsed. Western land speculators were as 
active in those days as now, and Washington 
was chief among them. We find him first in- 
terested in the valley, through broad acres 
acquired on land-grants issued for military 
services in the French and Indian War; Rev- 
olutionary bounty claims made him a still 
larger landholder on Western waters; and, to 
the close of the century, he was actively in- 
terested in schemes to develop the region. 
We are not in the habit of so regarding him, 
but both by frequent personal presence in the 
Ohio valley, and extensive interests at stake 
there, the Father of his Country was the most 
conspicuous of Western pioneers. Dearly did 
Washington love the West, which he knew so 
well; when the Revolutionary cause looked 
dark, and it seemed possible that England 
might seize the coast settlements, he is said 
to have cried, "We will retire beyond the 
mountains, and be free!" and in his declining 
years he seemed to regret that he was too old 
to join his former comrades of the camp, in 
their colony at Marietta. 



3 16 On the Storied Ohio 

As early as 1754, Franklin, in his famous 
Albany Plan of Union for the colonies, had a 
device for establishing new states in the West, 
upon lands purchased from the Indians. In 
1773, he displayed interest in the Walpole 
plan for another colony, — variously called 
Pittsylvania, Vandalia, and New Barataria — 
with its proposed capital at the mouth of the 
Great Kanawha. There were, too, several 
other Western colonial schemes, — among 
them the Henderson colony of Transylvania, 
between the Cumberland and the Tennessee, 
the seat of which was Boonesborough. Read- 
ers of Roosevelt well know its brief but bril- 
liant career, intimately connected with the 
development of Tennessee and Kentucky. 
But the most of these hopeful enterprises came 
to grief with the political secession of the 
colonies; and when the coast States ceded 
their Western land-claims to the new general 
government, and the Ordinance of 1787 pro- 
vided for the organization of the Territory 
Northwest of the River Ohio, there was no 
room for further enterprises of this character. * 

* See Turner's ' ' Western State-Making in the Revolution- 
ary Era," in Amer. Hist. Rev., Vol. I.; also, Alden's "New 
Governments West of the Alleghanies, " in Bull. Univ. Wis., 
Hist. Series, Vol. II. 



Historical Outline 317 

The story of the Ohio is the story of the 
West. With the close of the Revolution, 
came a rush of travel down the great river. 
It was more or less checked by border warfare, 
which lasted until 1794; but in that year, 
Anthony Wayne, at the Battle of Fallen 
Timbers, broke the backbone of savagery 
east of the Mississippi; the Tecumseh upris- 
ing (1 8 1 2-1 3) came too late seriously to affect 
the dwellers on the Ohio. 

There were two great over-mountain high- 
ways thither, one of them being Braddock's 
Road, with Redstone (now Brownsville, Pa.) 
and Pittsburg as its termini; the other was 
Boone's old trail, or Cumberland Gap. With 
the latter, this sketch has naught to do. 

By the close of the Revolution, Pittsburg — 
in Gist's day, but a squalid Indian village, and 
a fording-place — was still only " a distant out- 
post, merely a foothold in the Far West." 
By 1785, there were a thousand people there, 
chiefly engaged in the fur-trade and in for- 
warding emigrants and goods to the rapidly- 
growing settlements on the middle and lower 
reaches of the river. The population had 
doubled by 1803. By 18 12 there was to be 
seen here just the sort of bustling, vicious 



3 1 8 On the Storied Ohio 

frontier town, with battlement-fronts and rag- 
ged streets, which Buffalo and then Detroit 
became in after years. Cincinnati and Chi- 
cago, St. Louis and Kansas City, had still 
later, each in turn, their share of this experi- 
ence; and, not many years ago, Bismarck, 
Omaha, and Leadville. From Philadelphia 
and Baltimore and Richmond, there were run- 
ning to Pittsburg or Redstone regular lines of 
stages for the better class of passengers; freight 
wagons laden with immense bales of goods 
were to be seen in great caravans, which fre- 
quently were "stalled" in the mud of the 
mountain roads; emigrants from all parts of 
the Eastern States, and many countries of 
Europe, often toiled painfully on foot over 
these execrable highways, with their bundles 
on their backs, or following scrawny cattle 
harnessed to makeshift vehicles; and now and 
then came a well-to-do equestrian with his 
pack-horses, — generally an Englishman, — who 
was out to see the country, and upon his re- 
turn to write a book about it. 

At Pittsburg, and points on the Alleghany, 
Youghiogheny, and Monongahela, were boat- 
building yards which turned out to order a 
curious medley of craft — arks, flat- and keel- 



Historical Outline 319 

boats, barges, pirogues, and schooners of 
every design conceivable to fertile brain. 
Upon these, travelers took passage for the then 
Far West, down the swift-rolling Ohio. There 
have descended to us a swarm of published 
journals by English and Americans alike, giv- 
ing pictures, more or less graphic, of the men 
and manners of the frontier; none is without 
interest, even if in its pages the priggish au- 
thor but unconsciously shows himself, and 
fail's to hold the mirror up to the rest of na- 
ture. With the introduction of steamboats, — 
the first was in 1 8 1 1 , but they were slow to 
gain headway against popular prejudice, — the 
old river life, with its picturesque but rowdy 
boatmen, its unwieldy flats and keels and 
arks, began to pass away, and water traffic to 
approach the prosaic stage; the crossing of 
the mountains by the railway did away with 
the boisterous freighters, the stages, and the 
coaching-taverns; and when, at last, the river 
became paralleled by the iron way, the glory 
of the steamboat epoch itself faded, riverside 
towns adjusted themselves to the new highways 
of commerce, new centers arose, and "side- 
tracked" ports fell into decay. 



APPENDIX B. 

Selected list of Journals of previous 
travelers down the ohio. 

Gist, Christopher. Gist's Journals; with 
historical, geographical, and ethnological 
notes, and biographies of his contemporaries, 
by William M. Darlington. Pittsburg, 1893. 

Gist's trip down the valley, from October, 1750, to May, 
175 1, was on horseback, as far as the site of Frankfort, Ky. 
On his second trip into Kentucky, from November, 175 1, to 
March n, 1752, he touched the river at few points. 

Gordon, Harry. Extracts from the Journal 
of Captain Harry Gordon, chief engineer in 
the Western department in North America, 
who was sent from Fort Pitt, on the River 
Ohio, down the said river, etc., to Illinois, 
in 1766. 

Published in Pownall's "Topographical Description of 
North America," Appendix, p. 2. 

Washington, George. Journal of a tour to 

the Ohio River. [Writings, ed. by Ford, vol. 

II. New York, 1889.] 

The trip lasted from October 5 to December 1, 1770. The 
320 



Bibliography 321 

party went in boats from Fort Pitt, as far down as the mouth 
of the Great Kanawha. This journal is the best on the sub- 
ject, written in the eighteenth century. 

Pownall, T. A topographical description 
of such parts of North America as are con- 
tained in the [annexed] map of the Middle 
British Colonies, etc. London, 1776. 

Contains "Extracts from Capt. Harry Gordon's Journal," 
"Extracts from Mr. Lewis Evans' Journal" of 1743, and 
" Christopher Gist's Journal " of 1750-51. 

Hutchins, Thomas. Topographical descrip- 
tion of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and 
North Carolina, comprehending the Rivers 
Ohio, Kenhawa, Sioto, Cherokee, Wabash, 
Illinois, Mississippi, etc. London, 1778. 

St. John, M. Lettres d'un cultivateur 
Americain. Paris, 1787, 3 vols. 

Vol. 3 contains an account of the author's boat trip down 
the river, in 1784. 

De Vigni, Antoine F. S. Relation of his 
voyage down the Ohio River from Pittsburg 
to the Falls, in 1788. 

Graphic and animated account by a French physician who 
came out with the Scioto Company's immigrants to Galli- 
polis. Given in "Proc. Amer. Antiq. Soc", Vol. XI., pp. 
369-380. 

May, John. Journal and letters [to the 
Ohio country, 1788-89]. Cincinnati, 1873. 

One of the best, for economic views. May was a Boston 
merchant. 



322 On the Storied Ohio 

Forman y Samuel S. Narrative of a journey 
down the Ohio and Mississippi in 1789-90. 
With a memoir and illustrative notes, by Ly- 
man C. Draper. Cincinnati, 1888. 

A lively and appreciative account. Touches social life at 
the garrisons, en route. 

Ellicott, Andrew. Journal of the late com- 
missioner on behalf of the United States during 
part of the year 1796, the years 1797, 1798, 
1799, and part of the year 1800: for determin- 
ing the boundary between the United States 
and Spain. Philadelphia, 1803. 

His trip down the river was in 1796. 

Baily, Francis. Journal of a tour in un- 
settled parts of North America, in 1796 and 
1797. London, 1856. 

The author's river voyage was in 1796. 

Harris, Thaddeus Mason. Journal of a tour 
into the territory northwest of the Alleghany 
Mountains; made in the spring of the year 
1803. Boston, 1805. 

A valuable work. The author traveled on a flatboat. 

Michaux, F. A. Travels to the west of the 
Alleghany Mountains. London (2nd ed.), 
1805. 

Excellent, for economic conditions. The expedition was 
made in 1802. 



Bibliography 323 

Ashe, Thomas. Travels in America, per- 
formed in 1806. London, 1808. 

Among the best of the early journals, although abounding 
in exaggerations. 

Cuming, F. Sketches of a tour to the 
Western country, etc., commenced in 1807 
and concluded in 1809. Pittsburg, 18 10. 

Bradbury, John. Travels [1809- 11] in the 
interior of America. Liverpool, 18 17. 

Melish, John. Travels in the United States 
of America [181 1]. Philadelphia, 1812,2 vols. 

Vol. 2 contains the journal of the author's voyage down 
the river, in a skiff. The account of means of early naviga- 
tion is graphic. 

Flint, Timothy. Recollections of the last 

ten years. Boston, 1826. 

There is no better account of boats, and river life gener- 
ally, in 1814-15, the time of Flint's voyage. 

Fearon, Henry Bradshaiu. Sketches of 
America [18 17]. London, 18 19. 

Palmer, John. Journal of travels in the 
United States of North America [18 17]. Lon- 
don, 1818. 

Evans, Estwick. A pedestrian tour [18 18] 
of four thousand miles through the Western 
states and territories. Concord, N. H., 18 19. 

Birkbeck, Morris. Notes on a journey in 



324 On the Storied Ohio 

America, from the coast of Virginia to the 
Territory of Illinois. London, 18 18. 

The author traveled, in 18 17, by light wagon from Rich- 
mond to Pittsburg; and from Pittsburg to Cincinnati by 
horseback. This book, interesting for economic conditions, 
together with the author's " Letters from Illinois," did much 
to inspire emigration to Illinois from England. His English 
colony, at English Prairie, 111., was much visited by travelers 
of the period. 

Faux, W. Journal of a tour to the United 
States [in 18 19]. 

Excellent pictures of American life and agricultural meth- 
ods, by an English gentleman farmer. Attacks Birkbeck's 
roseate views. 

Ogden, George W. Letters from the West, 
comprising a tour through the Western coun- 
try [1 821], and a residence of two summers in 
the States of Ohio and Kentucky. New Bed- 
ford, Mass., 1823. 

Welby, Adlard. A visit to North America 
and the English settlements in Illinois. Lon- 
don, 1821. 

The author went by horseback, occasionally touching the 
river towns. 

Beltrami, J. C. Pilgrimage in Europe and 
America. London, 1828, 2 vols. 

In Vol. II the author describes a steamboat journey in 
1823, from Pittsburg to the mouth. 



Bibliography 325 

Hall, James. Letters from the West. 

London, 1828. 

Valuable for scenery, manners, and customs, and anec- 
dotes of early Western settlement. 

Anonymous. The Americans as they are; 
described by a tour through the valley of the 
Mississippi. London, 1828. 

Trollope, Mrs. [Frances M.]. Domestic 
manners of the Americans. London and New 
York, 1832. 

A lively caricature, the precursor of Dickens' "American 
Notes." Mrs. Trollope's voyages on the Ohio were in 1828 
and 1830. 

Vigne, Godfrey T. Six months in Amer- 
ica. London, 1832, 2 vols. 

Hamilton, T. Men and manners in Amer- 
ica. Philadelphia, 1833. 

Includes a steamboat journey from Pittsburg to New 
Orleans. 

Alexander, Capt. J. E. Transatlantic 
sketches. London, 1833, 2 vols. 

Vol. II. has an account of a trip up the river. 

Stuart, James. Three years in North Amer- 
ica. New York, 1833, 2 vols. 

Vol. II. includes a voyage up the Ohio. The author takes 
issue, throughout, with Mrs. Trollope. 

Brackenridge, H M. Recollections of per- 



326 On the Storied Ohio 

sons and places in the West. Philadelphia, 
1834. 

Describes river trips, during the first decade of the cen- 
tury. 

Tudor, Henry. Narrative of a tour [1831- 

32] in North America. London, 1834, 2 vols. 

The Ohio trip is in Vol. II. 

Arfwedson, C. D. The United States and 
Canada, in 1832, 1833, an d 1834. London, 
1834, 2 vols. 

In Vol. II is a report of a steamboat trip up the river. 
Latrobe, Charles Joseph. The rambler in 
North America. New York, 1835, 2 v °l s - 

Vol. II has an account of a descending steamboat voyage. 

Anonymous. A winter in the West. By a 
New Yorker. New York (2nd ed.), 1835, 2 
vols. 

In Vol. I. is an entertaining account of a stage-coach ride 
in 1833, from Pittsburg to Cleveland, touching all settle- 
ments on the Upper Ohio down to Beaver River. 

Nichols, Thomas L. Forty years of Amer- 
ican life. London, 1864, 2 vols. 

In Vol. I. the author tells of a steamboat tour from Pitts- 
burg to New Orleans, in 1840. 

Dickens, Charles. American notes. New 
York, 1842. 



Bibliography 327 

Dickens, in 1841, traveled in steamboats from Pittsburg to 
St. Louis. His dyspeptic comments on life and manners in 
the United States, at the time grated harshly on the ears of 
our people; but afterward, they grew strong and wise 
enough to smile at them. The book is to-day, like Mrs. 
Trollope's, entertaining reading for an American. 

Rubio (pseud.). Rambles in the United 
States and Canada, in 1845. London, 1846. 

A typical English growler, who thinks America ' ' the 
most disagreeable of all disagreeable countries;" neverthe- 
less, he says of the Ohio, ' ' a finer thousand miles of river 
scenery could hardly be found in the wide world." 

Mackay, Alex. The Western world; or, 
travels in the United States in 1846-47. Lon- 
don, 1849. 

Good for its character sketches, glimpses of slavery, and 
report of economic conditions. 

Robertson, James. A few months in Amer- 
ica [winter of 1853-54]. London, n. d. 

Chiefly statistical. 

Murray, Charles Augustus. Travels in 
North America. London, 1854, 2 vols. 

Vol. I has the Ohio-river trip. The author is an appre- 
ciative Englishman, and tells his story well. 

Murray, Henry A . Lands of the slave and 
the free. London, 1855, 2 vols. 

In Vol. I is an account of an Ohio-river voyage. 

Ferguson, William. America by river and 
rail [in 1855]. London, 1856. 



328 On the Storied Ohio 

Lloyd, James T. Steamboat directory, and 
disasters on the Western waters. Cincinnati, 
1856. 

Valuable for stories and records of the early days of river 
transportation. 

Anonymous. A short American tramp in 
the fall of 1864. By the editor of "Life in 
Normandy." Edinburgh, 1865. 

An English geologist's journal. Distorted and overdrawn, 
on the travel side. He took steamer from St. Louis to Cin- 
cinnati. 

Bishop, Nathaniel H. Four months in a 
sneak-box. Boston, 1879. 

The author, in the winter of 1875-76, voyaged in an open 
boat from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and along the Gulf 
coast to Florida. 



INDEX. 



ABERDEEN, Ky., 167. 
^ Albany, N. Y.. 299, 316. 
Alden, George H., 316. 
Alexander, J. E., 325. 
Alexandria, O., 151. 
Alexandria, Va., 131. 
Allegheny City, Pa., 21. 
Alton, Ind., 224, 228, 231, 233, 234. 
America, 111. See Mound City, 

111. 
Antiquity, O., 115. 
Arfwedson, C. D., 326. 
Ashe, Thomas, 114, 273, 323. 
Ashland, Ky., 142, 143. 
Athalia, O., 136. 
Audubon, John James, 257, 258. 
Augusta, Ky., 170, 171. 
Aurora, Ind., 186, 187. 

BAKER'S BOTTOM.W.Va., 36. 
Baily, Francis, 322. 
Baltimore, 162, 318. 
Barlow, Joel, 130, 131. 
Bearsville, O., 73, 74. 
Beaver, Pa., 27-30. 
Belpre, O., 100-102. 
Beltrami, J. C, 324. 
Berkeley, Sir William, 297. 
Bethlehem, Ind., 260. 
Big Bone Creek, 191-200. 
Big Bone Lick, 152, 153, 191, 195- 

198, 268. 
Big Buffalo Lick, 183. 
Big Grave Creek, 62-66. 
Bird's Point Landing, Ky., 277. 
Birkbeck, Morris, 323, 324. 
Bishop, Nathaniel H.,328. 
Bismarck, N. D., 318. 
Bland, Edward, 297. 
Blennerhassett, Harman, 95-98. 
Blennerhassett's Island, 95-98, 

101. 
Blue Lick, 160. 
Boone, Daniel, 142, 206. 
Boonesborough, Ky., 316. 



Boone's Trail. See Wilderness 

Road. 
Brackenridge, H. M., 325, 326. 
Bradbury, John, 323. 
Braddock, Gen. Edward, 4, 16, 

17, 128, 312. 
Braddock, Pa., 17. 
Braddock's Road, 4, 12, 160, 312, 

3i4» 317- 
Brandenburg, Ind., 223, 224. 
Bridgeport, O., 60. 
Broderickville, O., 137. 
Brooklyn, 111., 284. 
Brown's Islands, 265, 266. 
Brownsville, Pa., 1-6, 8, 12, 15, 19, 

30, 61, 129, 131, 160, 162, 180, 

295- 3i4. 317. 3i8. 
Buffalo, N. Y., 318. 
Burlington, O., 137. 
Burr, Aaron, 96, 97. 
Butler's Run, 67. 
Byrd, Col. William, 304. 

/^•AIRO, 111., 7, 15, 222, 284, 291, 
V^ 294, 295- 
California, O., 180. 
Caledonia, 111. See Olmstead, 

111. 
Cannelton, Ind., 242. 
Captina, O., 70, 71. 
Captina Creek, 67, 70-72. 
Captina Island, 69, 70. 
Carrollton, Ky., 206. 
Carrsville, Ky., 276. 
Catlettsburg, Ky., 137, 141. 
Cave-in-Rock, 111., 273, 274. 
Celeron de Bienville, 90, 125, 309, 

310. 
Ceredo, W. Va., 137, 141. 
Charleroi, Pa., 5, 8, 9. 
Charleston, W. Va., 115, 127. 
Chartier, Pa., 22, 23. 
Chartier's Creek, 23. 
Cherokee Indians, 286. 
Cheshire, O., 119. 



329 



33° 



On the Storied Ohio 



Chesapeake & Ohio railway, 172. 

Chicago, 318. 

Chillicothe, O., 152, 179. 

Chilo, O., 170. 

Cincinnati, 88, 157, 159, 162, 170, 

177-184, 217, 252, 318, 324, 328. 
Circleville, O., 102. 
Clark, George Rogers, 4, 5, 70, 

72, 73, 94, 159, 178, 179, 218-220, 

264, 285-287. 
Clarksville, Ind, 219, 220. 
Cloverport, Ky., 239-242. 
Coal Valley, Pa., 13. 
Collins, Richard H., 153. 
Columbia, O., 180. 
Concordia, Ky., 234, 235. 
Conewango Creek, 304. 
Connolly, Dr. John, 218. 
Conwell, Yates, 72. 
Corn Island, 219, 220. 
Cornstalk, Shawanee chief, 128, 

129, 221. 
Covington, Ky., 178, 183, 184. 
Crawford, Col. William, 46. 
Creek Indians, 303. 
Cresap, Michael, 67. 
Cresap's Bottom, 72. 
Croghan, George, 91, 95, 114, 152. 
Crooked Creek, 130, 244. 
Cumberland, Md., 310. 
Cumberland Gap, 127, 160-162, 

317. 

Cumberland Island, 282. 
Cumberland Pike. See Brad- 
dock's Road. 
Cuming, F., 322, 323. 
Curran, Barney, 29. 
Cypress Bend, 260. 

DARLINGTON, William M., 
320. 
Doddridge, Joseph, 115. 
Deep Water Landing, Ind., 234. 
De Lery, Gaspard Chaussegros, 

304- 
Denman, Matthias, 179. 
De Nonville, Gov. Jacques Rene 

de Brisay, 300. 
Derby, Ky., 235-237, 243, 244. 
Detroit, Mich., 287, 318. 
De Vigni, Antoine F. S., 321. 
Diamond Island, 264. 
Dickens, Charles, 66, 325, 326. 
Dillon's Bottom, 66. 
Dinwiddie, Gov. Robert, 311. 
Dog Island, 281, 282. 
Dover, Ky., 170. 
Draper, Lyman C, 321. 



Dravosburg, Pa., 13. 
Dufour, John James, 204, 205. 
Dunkard Creek, 72. 
Dunlap Creek, 3. 
Dunmore, Lord, 23, 61, 102, 103, 
125-129, 218, 221. 

EAST LIVERPOOL, O., 35- 
Economy, Pa., 26. 
Elizabeth, Pa., 12, 15. 
Elizabethtown, 111., 275, 276. 
Ellicott, Andrew, 181, 322. 
Emmerick's Landing, Ky., 244. 
English Prairie, 111., 324. 
Enterprise, Ind., 254. 
Erie, Pa., 311. 
Evans, Estwick, 323. 
Evans, Lewis, 321. 
Evansville, Ind., 255, 256, 260, 
265. 

FAIRFAX, Lord, 304. 
Fallen Timbers, 181, 317. 
Falls of Ohio. See Louisville, 

Ky. 
Faux, W., 324. 

Fearon, Henry Bradshaw, 323. 
Ferguson, William, 327. 
Filson, John, 179-181. 
Fish Creek, 72, 73. 
Fishing Creek, 74. 
Flint, Timothy, 162, 163, 181, 323. 
Forbes, Gen. John, 285, 313. 
Forks of the Ohio. See Pitts- 
burg. 
Forman, Samuel S., 322. 
Foreman, Capt. William, 63. 
Fort Charlotte, 221. 

Duquesne, 16, 17, 285, 312, 
313. See Pittsburg. 

Fincastle, 61. 

Finney, 180. 

Gower, 102, 103, 129. 

Harmar, 91. 

Henry, 61. 

Le Bceuf, 15, 26, 311, 312. 

Massac, 285-288, 290, 313. 

Necessity, 4. 

Pitt, 127, 129, 160-162. See 
Pittsburg. 

Randolph, 129. 

Washington, 180. 

Wilkinson, 291. 
Foster, Ky., 170, 171. 
Frampton, O., 137. 
Frankfort, Ky., 320. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 316. 
Franquelin, Jean B. L., 299. 



Index 



331 



Freeman, O., 40. 

French, in Ohio valley, 15, 17, 29, 

30, 90, 125, 131, 132, 197, 205, 285, 

286, 298-313, 321. 
French Creek, 311. 
French Islands, 253. 
Fry, John, 141. 

GALISSONIERE, Count de, 
308 
Gallipolis, O., 130-133. 
Garrison Creek, 185. 
Genet, Edmund Charles, 286. 
George III., king, 309, 310, 313, 

314. 
Georgetown, Pa., 34. 
Germans, in Ohio valley, 26, 132, 

205. 
Girty, Simon, 71. 
Gist, Christopher, 15, 26, 29, 91, 

151, 152, 310, 311, 317, 320, 321. 
Glassport, Pa., 13. 
Glenwood, W. Va., 134. 
Gnadenhiitten, 91. 
Golconda Island, 276. 
Goose Island, 220. 
Gordon, Harry, 115, 320, 321. 
Grand View, Ind., 246. 
Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., 174. 
Grape Island, 80. 
Grape-Vine Town. See Captina, 

O. 
Grave Yard Run, 72. 
Great Bend, 172, 173. 
Great Meadows, 312, 314. 
Green River Island, 255. 
Green River Towhead, 255, 256. 
Greenup Court House, Ky., 147. 
Greenville, O., treaty of, 181. 
Gunpowder Creek, 192. 
Guyandotte, W. Va., 136. 

HALE, John P., 153. 
Half King, 34. 
Half-Moon Bar, 274. 
Hall, Tames, 117, 128, 164, 325. 
Hamilton, T., 325. 
Harmar, Gen. Josiah, 180, 181. 
Harmonists, 264. 
Harris, Thaddeus Mason, 162, 

322. 
Harris's Landing, 173. 
Hartford, W. Va., 119, 
Haskellville, O., 136. 
Hawesville, Ky., 242. 
Henderson, Ky., 256-259. 
Henderson, Richard, 316. 
Henderson Island, 258. 



Hennepin, Father Louis, 299. 
Henry, Patrick, 159. 
Herculaneum, Ind., 260. 
Higginsport, O., 170. 
Hockingport, O., 102-J.04. 
Homestead, Pa., 17, 10. 
Horse Head Bottom, 148. 
House-boat life, 50-57, 62, 134, 

135, 203, 204, 207, 208. 
Howard, John, 305, 306. 
Hungarians, in Ohio valley, 44, 

45, 69. 
Huntington, W. Va., 136-139. 
Hurricane Island, 274, 275. 
Hutchins, Thomas, 115, 321. 

TMLAY, Gilbert, 162. 
1 Ingles, Mrs. Mary, 152, 153. 
Ironton, O., 143-146, 157. 
Iroquois Indians, 264, 298, 299, 

302, 307, 308. 
Irving, Washington, 273. 
Italians, in Ohio valley, 69. 

JAMESTOWN, Va., 296. 
•J Jefferson, Thomas, 97. 
Joliet, Louis, 264. 
Jones, Rev. David, 70, 71, 94. 
Joppa, 111., 290, 291. 

[KANSAS CITY, 318. 

iv Kaskaskia, 111., 268, 285. 

King Philip, 221. 

Kingston, O., 40. 

Kneistly's Cluster Islands, 36-39. 

LA FAYETTE, Marquis de, 92. 
Lake Chautauqua, 299, 304, 309. 
Lake Erie, 299, 304, 309, 313. 
Lancaster, Pa., 307. 
Lane, Ralph, 296, 297. 
La Salle, Chevalier de, 218, 263, 

264, 298. 299. 
Latrobe, Charles Joseph, 326. 
La Verendrye Brothers, 306. 
Lawrenceburg, Ind., 186. 
Leadville, Colo., 318. 
Leavenworth, Ind., 224,225. 
Lederer, John, 297. 
Letart's Falls, 113, 114, 117. 
Letart's Island, 112. 
Levanna, O., 170. 
Lewis, Gen. Andrew, 128, 129. 
Lewisport, Ind., 246. 
Lexington, Ky., 159. 
Limestone Creek, 158, 159, 162, 

167. 
Little Beaver Creek, 34. 



33 2 



On the Storied Ohio 



Little Hurricane Island, 252. 

Little Meadows, 128. 

Lloyd, James T., 328. 

Logan, Mingo chief, 36, 37, 102. 

103, 127, 128. 
Logstown, Pa., 26. 
Long Bottom, O., 109-111, 117. 
Long Reach, 79,80. 
Losantiville. See Cincinnati. 
Lostock, Pa., 13. 
Louisa, Ky., 141, 142. 
Louisville, Ky., 114, 169, 170, 180, 

209, 214-223, 226, 256, 284, 298, 299. 
Lower Blue River Island, 226. 

MACKAY, Alex., 327. 
McKee's Rocks, 23, 178. 
McKeesport, Pa., 13-16. 
Madison, Ind., 209-214. 
Madison County, Va., 297. 
Malott, Catherine, 71. 
Manchester, O., 157. 
Marietta, O., 83-85, 87, 90-93, 130, 

131, 157. 159. 162, 315. 
Mason and Dixon line, 77. 
Mason City, VV. Va., 119. 
Massac Creek, 285. 
May, John, 321. 
May, Col. William, 304. 
Maysville, Ky., 157, 159, 167, 169. 
Melish, John, 323. 
Mercer, George, 126. 
Metropolis, 111, 288, 289. 
Miami Indians, 303. 
Michaux, F. A., 322. 
Middleport, O., 118. 
Millersport, O., 136. 
Milwood, W. Va., 112. 
Minersville, O., 118. 
Mingo Bottom, 127. 
Mingo Indians, 36, 37, 46, 127, 148. 
Mingo Junction, O., 44-50, 57, 58. 
Monongahela City, Pa., 8, 12. 
Montreal, 313. 
Moravian missionaries, 91. 
Morgantown, Pa., 3. 
Mound builders, 3, 4, 64-66. 
Mound City, 111., 290-292, 294. 
Mound City Tovvhead, 292-295. 
Moundsville, W. Va., 64-66, 115. 
Mt. Vernon, Ind., 262. 
Murray, Charles Augustus, 327. 
Murray, Henry A., 327. 
Murraysville, W. Va., in. 

NATCHEZ, Miss., 181. 
Nemacolin's Path, 160, 310, 312. 
See Braddock's Road. 



Neville, O., 170, 173. 
Neville's Island, 25. 
New Albany, Ind., 220-223. 
New Amsterdam, Ind., 224. 
New Barataria, 316. 
Newburgh, Ind., 254, 255. 
New Cumberland, W. Va., 37, 40. 
New Harmony, Ind., 264. 
New Haven, W. Va., 119. 
New Martinsville, W. Va., 74-77. 
New Matamoras, W. Va.,82. 
New Orleans, 12, 96, 97, 170, 205, 

305. 309, 3i3. 325, 328. 
Newport, Christopher, 296. 
Newport, Ky., 176, 178, 183. 
Newport, O., 82, 83. 
New Richmond, O., 176. 
Nichols, Thomas L., 326. 
Nicholson, interpreter, 70. 
Norfolk & Western Railway, 144. 
North Bend, O., 173, 180, 181, 184, 
Northwest Territory, 316. 

OGDEN, George W., 324- 
Ohio Company, 4,90, 114, 125, 
152, 310,314, 315- 
Old Wyandot Town, 91. 
Olmstead, 111., 291. 
Omaha, Nebr., 318. 
Owensboro, Ky., 248-251, 271. 

DADUCAH, Ky., 284. 

A Palmer, John, 114, 115, 162, 

164, 323- 
Parkersburg, W. Va., 94, 95, 99, 

100, 102, 157. 
Parkinson's Landing, III., 276. 
Parkman, Francis, 308. 
Patterson, Robert, 179. 
Pennant, Edward, 297. 
Petersburg, Ky., 186, 187. 
Philadelphia, 12, 161, 318. 
Pickaway Plains, 102, i«3, 129. 
Picket, Heathcoat, 205, 206. 
Pine Creek, 148. 
Pipe Creek, 67. 
Pittsburg, 3, 5, 6, 8, 17-22, 24, 25, 

27, 40, 59, 88, 129, 159, 166, 271, 

311-313, 316-318, 320, 321, 323. 

324, 326, 328. 
Plum Creek, 205. 
Point Pleasant, W. Va., 125, 127- 

130, 157. 170. 173, 174- 
Point Sandy, Ind., 227-231. 
Pomeroy, O., in, 118, 119, 157. 
Pomeroy Bend, in, 119. 
Pontiac, Indian chief, 221. 
Pope, John, 5. 



Index 



333 



Portland, Ky., 219-221. 
Portsmouth, O., 151-153, 157. 
Power, Thomas, 287. 
Powhattan Point, W. Va., 70. 
Pownall, T., 286, 320, 321. 
Presque Isle, 311. 
Proctor's Run, 77. 
Proctorville, O., 137. 
Putnam, Israel, Jr., 100, 101. 
Putnam, Israel, Sr., 100. 
Putnam, Gen. Rufus, 91, 102. 

/QUEBEC, 299, 313. 

RABBIT HASH, Ky., 189-191. 
Racine, O., 117, 118. 
Rafinesque, Constantine S., 257, 

258. 
Rapp, George, 26. 
Redstone Creek, 3-5, 72, 310. 
Redstone Old Fort. See Browns- 
ville, Pa. 
Richardson's Landing, Ky., 224. 
Richmond, Va., 296, 318, 324. 
Ripley, O., 170. 
Rising Sun, Ind., 189. 
River Alleghany, 20, 299, 304, 305, 
309, 311, 318. 

Beaver, 27-30. 

Big Hockhocking, 102-104. 

Big Miami, 179, 180, 185. 

Big Sandy, 119, 137, 141. 

Cherokee, 321. 

Coal, 305. 

Cumberland, 97, 282, 284, 

316. 
Delaware, 298. 
Gauley, 298. 

Great Kanawha, 70, 115, 125- 
130, 153. 161, 297, 309, 316, 
321. 
Great Miami, 304. 
Green, 255, 259. 
Illinois, 321. 

Indian Kentucky, 206, 207. 
James, 126, 127, 161, 296. 
Kentucky, 206. 
Licking, 179, 183. 
Little Kanawha, 94, 95. 
Little Miami, 152, 177, 179, 

180. 
Little Sandy, 147. 
Little Scioto, 148. 
Maumee, 264, 299, 309. 
Miami, 309. 

Mississippi, 284, 294, 303, 
306, 307, 313, 321. 



River Mohawk, 298. 

Monongahela, 1-20, 39, 162., 
166, 310, 311, 318. 

Muskingum, 90, 91, 127. 

New, 297, 298, 309. 

Ottawa, 307. 

Potomac, 304, 310. 

Roanoke, 296, 297, 304. 

St. Joseph's, 303. 

St. Lawrence, 306, 309. 

Saline, 269, 272, 273. 

Salt, 223. 

Shenandoah, 304. 

Scioto, 102, 103, 151-153, 321. 

Susquehanna, 298. 
Tennessee, 283, 284, 288, 
303, 316. 

Wabash, 127, 263, 264, 302, 
321. 

Wood, 305. See New. 

Youghiogheny, 13-16, 162, 
318. 
Robertson, James, 327. 
Rochester, Pa., 27-30. 
Rockport, Ind., 246, 247. 
Rocky Mountains, discovery of, 

306. 
Rome, O., 155-157, 260. 
Rono, Ind., 234, 235. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, 316. 
Rosebud, O., 133, 134,156. 
Rose Clare, 111., 276. 
Round Bottom, 66, 69. 

ST. CLAIR, Gen. Arthur, 180, 
181, 286. 
St. John, M., 321. 
St. Louis, 170, 284, 318, 326, 328. 
St. Mary's, W. Va., 82. 
Salem, O., 91. 

Saline Reserve (Illinois), 268, 269. 
Sailing, John Peter, 305, 306. 
Sand Island, 220-222. 
Sandusky, O., 46. 
Sarikonk. See Beaver, Pa. 
Schonbrunn, 91. 
Scioto Company, 130-132, 321. 
Sciotoville, O., 148-150. 
Scotch-Irish, in Ohio valley, 60, 

61, 301, 310. 
Scuffletown, Ky., 254. 
Seignelay, Marquis de, 300. 
Seneca Indians, 34. 
Seven Mile Creek, 284, 285. 
Shaler, Nathaniel S., 153. 
Shannoah Town, 151, 152. 
Shawanee Indians, 26, 67, 128- 

130, 151-153, 307. 



334 



On the Storied Ohio 



Shawneetown, 111., 267-269. 

Sheffield, O., 118. 

Shingis Old Town. See Beaver, 

Pa. 
Shippingsport, Pa., 31-34. 
Shousetown, Pa., 25. 
Sinking Creek, 238. 
Sistersville, W. Va., 78. 
Slavonians, in Ohio valley, 44, 

45- 
Slim Island, 261, 264. 
Sloan's Station, O., 37. 
Smith, John, 296. 
Smithland, Ky., 282. 
Smith's Ferry, Pa., 34. 
Sohkon. See Beaver, Pa. 
South Point, O., 137. 
Spaniards, Western conspiracy, 

of, 286, 287. 
Springville, Ky., 151, 152. 
Spotswood, Gov. Alexander, 302. 
Steamboats, first on Ohio, 165, 

166. 
Stephens, Frank, 71. 
Stephensport, Ky., 237-239. 
Steubenville, O., 5, 43, 44, 157, 181. 
Stewart's Island, 277-281, 283. 
Stuart, James, 325. 
Swiss, in Ohio valley, 204, 205. 
Symmes, John Cleves, 179-181. 
Syracuse, O., 118. 

XECUMSEH, Indian chief, 317. 
* Tell City, Ind.,242. 
Three Brothers Islands, 87. 
Three-Mile Island, 252, 254. 
Transylvania, 316. 
Treaty, of Lancaster, Pa., 307, 

308; of Paris, 313; of Utrecht, 

307. 
Trent, William, 95. 
Tudor, Henry, 326. 
Turner, Frederick J., 316. 
Turtle Creek, 17, 312. 
Trollope, Frances M., 325, 327. 
Troy, Ind., 243. 



NIONTOWN, Ky., 262, 263. 
Upper Blue River Island, 



U 



VANDALIA, Province of, 126, 
316. 
Vanceburgh, Ky., 154. 
Venango, 29. 
Vevay, Ind., 204, 205. 
Vigne, Godfrey T., 325. 
Vincennes, Ind., 264. 

WABASH ISLAND, 264. 
Walpole, Thomas, 316. 

Walton, Pa., 13. 

Warrior Branch, 72. 

Wars, French and Indian, 15, 17, 
29, 30, 90, 91, 152, 153, 285, 2S6, 
308, 314, 315; Pontiac's, 221; 
Lord Dunmore's, 36, 37, 61, 67, 
72, 73, 102, 103, 125-129, 218, 221; 
Revolution, 61, 63, 91, 92, 100, 
126, 128, 130, 151-161, 181, 182, 
264, 315, 317; of 1812-15, 287, 291. 

Warsaw, Ky., 200, 204. 

Washington, George, 4, 15, 23, 26, 
29, 34, 46, 67, 69, 70, 72, 92, 126- 
128, 141, 142, 161, 310-312, 315, 
320, 321. 

Wayne, Anthony, 26, 181, 286, 317. 

Weiser, Conrad, 26. 

Welby, Adlard, 324. 

Wellsville, 0.,35- 

West Point, Ky., 223. 

Wheeling, W. Va., 5, 41, 59-62, 
155. 157. 167, 187. 

Wheeling Creek, 59-61. 

Wheeling Island, 60. 

Wilderness Road, 160-162, 317. 

Wilkinson, Gen. James, 287. 

Wilkinsonville, 111., 291. 

Williamson's Island, 78. 

Wills Creek, 310, 312. 

Wilson, Pa., 13. 

Witten's Bottom, 78, 79. 

Wood, Abraham, 297. 

Wyandot Indians, 46, 91. 

yELLOWBANK ISLAND, 248 
1 250. 
Yellow Creek, 35, 36. 

7ANE BROTHERS, 60, 61. 



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